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Review: Glen Phillips and Po'Girl

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Posted: October 26, 2007 - 6:35 pm

By Laura Carpenter

Whistling Swan Productions opened its 2007-08 season with a double bill — one of several this season — on Saturday night at the Discovery Theatre. With only a sprinkle of seats empty, the crowd hummed, sang and snapped along to nearly three hours of folk music that drifted from introspective and romantic to jazzy and bluesy.

First up, Glen Phillips showed us why Toad the Wet Sprocket went platinum in the early ‘90s and how his music is much better now. His rendition of “All I Want” took me back to high school and how I listened to the boot-legged tape over and over on my Walkman (with Annie Lennox on the B side). But the stories, lyrics and charisma of his more recent and personal songs made his set rock.

Looking like a next door neighbor in jeans and small wire glasses, Phillips brought a subtle, self-effacing humor to his song introductions and the lyrics themselves. His song about a southern boy’s drive with his dad made the audience laugh out loud at each chorus.

The night before, he and Po’ Girl performed in front of a rowdy crowd in Homer — so he saved all the mellow songs for us. These songs slowed us down, focused us, made us leave the outside world behind. Just a guy and his acoustic guitar; he had all our attention. You are here now.

Canadian band Po’ Girl drew on whatever roots the song called for as they grooved from bluegrass to jazz to down by the bayou. They sang about loss and love with quick tunes and lullabies. Diona Davis, Awna Teixeira and Allison Russell were accompanied by Benny Sidelinger on guitars he made himself. (Be Good Tanyas member Trish Klein, who used to be a part of Po’ Gir,l wasn’t present and isn’t listed as a member anymore on their MySpace.)

The band has a lot of talent, some songs were great and each song held its own beauty. However, they seemed to have more fun than I did and their influences spanned so many genres that the set didn’t feel cohesive as a concert.

Between songs, members scrambled around switching instruments and pulling out new ones from hidden crannies. In addition to stomps, claps and snaps, Po’ Girl members played fiddle, banjo, small xylophone, clarinet, harmonica, washtub bass and tambourine.

The lead singer Russell (all members sang but she had lead vocals most of the time) had a beautiful voice, jazzy yet able to capture feel of old time bluegrass and New Orleans. When she sang, “God bless this beautiful morning til it’s gone,” we wanted to celebrate the wonder in the everyday. She could probably take off and blast away in her own career with CDs at Starbucks, but then it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun on the road and she probably wouldn’t be as free to be as silly or cutesy. Her stories, pig-tail dreads, lacey thigh-high stockings, giggles and comments were all very cute, but after an hour it was too much and I just wanted to hear her sing so I ended up liking the stoic, seemingly grouchy but really just-hungover-because-her-birthday-was-the-night-before-and-Homer-got-her-drunk-at-the-Salty-Dawg-after-their-show fiddler who had great comic timing for her deadpan comments.

Laura Carpenter is a writer in Anchorage. Reach her at lcarpenter@gci.net.

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