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Lady Daisey at Capones - Part 2

Okay, enough ranting about Capones. On to the performance! And I'm glad I stayed for both sets.

After a couple of laid back sets from "Terminal Station", Lady Daisey put on an energetic performance for everyone who dropped in at Capones. This was helped by the fact that they didn't have to take over the entire stage with their musical instruments -- DJ Batsauce was at one side bringing us original beats played off a laptop. There was quite a wide variety of short tunes to fill the breaks between Lady Daisey's performances. This ever-changing mix kept you on your toes, but the transitions were sometimes jarring.

Overall Lady Daisey gave an engaging performance despite the room being a "typical" Vancouver restaurant jazz venue, where people are generally more interested in yapping with their friends and talking over the music. You could just pipe music to this sort of audience and they wouldn't know the difference. They're there for drinks while having a seat and elbow room that you can't get in a busier bar or club. A few times she tried to engage the audience with sing-a-longs or clapping, but we're evidently a different sort of animal in Vancouver, and (from my perspective) it seemed to fall flat.
This sort of thing is tricky to do because once the performer initiates the attempt to get audience participation, they can't take it back and are more or less forced to go along with or without cooperation from the audience. And on the part of the audience, no one wants to be doing it alone, so it's more or less all or nothing (or at least there needs to be a group that's doing it).

Other than that, the performance was lively and enjoyable, with a variety of songs, most of which you could make out the words to and let the meaning sink in gently. Their single, "Soul Strut", deserved to rise to the top of their current album, although it started strong but (in my opinion only) flagged in the second half and wasn't as captivating.
They put it at the top of their second set, which at the time seemed a good idea as it starts strong and catchy to wake up the room and grab audience attention for their second set.

If you missed her tonight, you can catch her Friday, September 3rd, at Falconetti's on Commercial. I'll be Friday, 9:00 pm. And probably a bigger audience and possibly a packed room -- which is what this duo really deserves, and I hope they get a room that works with them instead of being too busy to notice.
If you prefer intimate-and-interactive in a more relaxed atmosphere where you can have a table and legroom... well, you missed it.

If you don't buy into downloading music, they have both a CD and vinyl (!).

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