Lunch of Champions

Milk with Cookies, Margaritas with Jimmy Buffet, and Moonshine with Jolie Holland

Cosmopolitans were probably not the perfect choice to compliment an evening out to see Jolie Holland. Which is not to say that they weren’t the best five cosmopolitans I had ever had. I earnestly believe that blessed is the person who has a friend who can make a mean cosmopolitan and is willing to do it multiple times over (although I admit that I did supply the very festive green cherries). Also that person is very drunk. And the timeline to make it to a show becomes a little more lacks. Our tickets stated that the show started at 8 p.m., but seriously, what show on a Saturday really starts at 8 p.m.? “If we make it there by 9:30ish, we’ll be fiiiine,” I assured. Regular music-goers know this. It is like an unspoken and secret-to-the-masses rule: “the headlining band shalt not begin playing until at least an hour past their scheduled time…and not until midnight if they have at least two opening bands.” Well, 9:30 slurred into 10:20 and we were just piling into the car (no, I was not the DD for the evening, thanks for the concern).

We made it in at 10:40, missing about 20 minutes of Holland’s performance, much to the deserved tut-tutting of the woman who carded us, took our tickets, and stamped our hands. I’m always bummed when I miss 20 minutes of a such a music opportunity, especially at the Varsity, my favorite venue, but after only one and a half songs in, I was compelled to whisper confidentially to my friend, “I think we’ve already got our $12 worth.” He nodded. It was true, and we were in for over an additional hour.

It was about then that she launched into a story about a very naive interviewer who thought that moonshine was just some kind of legend and not an actual thing. She laughed about this, adding some comment about all the moonshiners she has known. Having received weak (and unconvincing — do you really think a lot of Twin Cities hipsters know bunches of moonshiners?) sympathetic laughter, she finished with something to the effect of how maybe she was an anomaly that just happened to have a lot of moonshiner friends.

That may be the case, and it would be appropriate. “Moonshine” — it sounds like a chapter in a fairytale, but it has an edge, much like Jolie Holland’s music. If she were an animal, she’d be the songbird in Bambi — Jolie doesn’t just sing, nor does she croon, she lilts in an almost-yodeling songbird voice, the melody folding randomly every which way in some bizarre and wonderful jazz-like folk — and she’d be forewarning of the dark tragedies and hazardous lust ahead. Or maybe she’d be the fairy in Peter Pan, the one whose fairy dandruff makes you fly,and then she drinks the poison to save your life…but maybe, just maybe, if all the audience concentrates really really really carefully and they believe in fairies, REALLY BELIEVE, she may just be saved.

The audience certainly seemed to think her life depended on it, or at least that’s what they wanted to think. To say that the whole crowd appeared to hang on her every word would be an egregious understatement. Where there was carpet on the floor, people sat cross-legged in jagged rows, slack-jawed and heads cocked, as if we were all in kindergarten and Teacher was dispensing storytime. On the sides of the room, people perched on tables, rails, and seats with the same expression of wonder and unfazed attention; there was no fidgeting in this classroom, only entirely voluntary rapt attention.

Her band, consisting of drummer Dave Mihaly — a drummer that creates the decidedly jazz-style down for Holland’s songbird melodies — and Brian Miller, with his impressive, but never invasive, guitar solos — the wind over Holland’s semiplume of guitar rhythm and sometimes fiddle — seemed as enraptured as the audience.

When she pulled out the ash-colored box fiddle that she said her friend made for her out of scrap wood, we started to believe that she really did come from some parallel fairy tale life, somewhere in the deep south woods where everyone whispers in harmony with the trees and the foxes stop by to have their regular chat with you and the resident squirrels.

It’s no surprise I’ve seen her compared in her character and folk legend-potential by other reviewers to Bob Dylan, Tom Waits (she and Waits share the same label and he has nominated her for the Shortlist of Music Prize), and even Nina Simone.

There was no last-song-that-is-really-not-our-last-song. The last song really was the last song. The credits to her band rolled off her tongue for the third time, she lifted her guitar strap over her shoulder to gently set it down, and she left the stage. Storytime was over, and we all respected that, politely clapping and whooping, asking no more of her after she left the stage, as if we knew she had already given us enough of what we came for and to ask for more would be like asking Tinkerbell to drink poison for Wendy too.

Summary: 5 stars and a pinch of fairy dust

Free Samples: Get a taste of her style by listening to “Springtime Can Kill You” on her MySpace page. It’s a good example of Mihaly’s jazz-style drumming layered under Holland’s fluttering melodies and whimsical-but-dark lyrics.

Her Web site has additional sample from an earlier album, or try typing her name into Pandora and enjoy several tracks along with artists from similar genres.

Other Facts:

• You might also know her from The Be Good Tanyas (you’ll recognize that voice in “The Littlest Birds”).
• From her Web site: “Jolie picked up guitar at the age of 14 and was performing originals (and some Guthrie tunes) on stage by the age of 16. She figured out how to play some Syd Barrett songs, abandoned the concept of going to college to hit the road in 1994, and bummed around between Austin, Texas and New Orleans among visual artists, musicians, circus performers, puppeteers, etc.”
• She likes to point out that she doesn’t like Robert Johnson (you’ll find her say this several places on the Web) — a rebellion from her blues roots, a political statement against misogynistic overtones, or other personal reasons…your guess for why is as good as mine.