Birchmere
September 23, 2010
Alexandria, VA
Review by: Nicole

I love when Rams Head and Birchmere roll around. I always get the looks from people…and the "Why are you going up there to see her? You guys are doing what? You're seeing her how many times in one weekend??"

This time, it couldn't have worked out any more perfect. Birchmere, Rams Head, and then Sellersville, PA just a few days after (and two shows, at that!). Four shows in one weekend- that's almost like my old school Patty days!

Being the nutcases we are (at least we admit it), Richard, Patti and I went to Birchmere and set up at 9:00 pm, the night before the show, proudly displaying our "FIRST IN LINE" sign. Birchmere staff was clearly amused by this and took photos themselves, to post on their Facebook and Twitter. It's amazing the stuff we do for her…. it's sure worth it when show time rolls around though! I had a lady come by and say, "WOW, is she really that popular??" Well….she is to us! I tried to explain that she didn't understand, we HAD to be first, there was just no other way around it, but I still got the "Wow, these people are freaking crazy!" look. Oh well.

The good news is we're all in this together, so it made for a fun (but hot- well I didn't think it was too bad, but I think Richard was hot! :P) afternoon in the Birchmere parking lot, and were eventually joined by Mike H and Jackie, and then Larry O & his wife Linda before the doors opened.

When the doors opened, Richard and I went racing in for our table only to spot another couple there. I'm pretty sure a few profanities came out of our mouths. No freaking way! The man told Richard that his wife was visually impaired, so they were allowed in early. (We didn't quite buy this, since she walked all over the place by herself!!) Yes, this is when we became the mean people annoyed --- totally uncool that they got to nab the best seats in the house when we waited so long. We grabbed the spots next to the, and luckily for us, by the time Patty came on, we forgot about how mad we were!

Patty came out to fantastic applause - especially from our table of myself, Richard, Patti, Mike H, Jackie, Larry O and Linda! As she has been, she opened the show with "The Night's Too Long".

The first few songs Patty was pretty low-key and didn't say much -- tearing into "Nothin' But the Wheel" and "On Down the Line".

As she led into "You Don't Seem to Miss Me", she spoke of how proud she was to have George Jones sing on this record with her, and how amazing it was for them to win Vocal Collaboration of the year.

"You Don't Even Know Who I Am", "You Can Feel Bad" and "Lovin' All Night" followed -- and we started to notice the sound was not quite right. Patty was having some major echo-ing and the drums were insanely loud. Amazing how even on nights when her sound isn't great, her show is STILL better than anyone elses!

She did a little changing of the set list after that--- cutting some songs out, which was a bit of a bummer. Okay, a lot of a bummer, especially when we noticed WHAT songs were missing. I'm not quite sure I understand why she keeps taking out the songs that people are requesting and go crazy for live, but whatever works for her, I guess! The Mountain Soul set seems to get shorter and shorter every me I see her now, which makes me a little nervous - I might go crazy if she takes it away again!

But anyway, she spoke very briefly about "Sleepless Nights", and Saguaro giving she and Emory the chance to record it and then said she wasn't going to talk much and was just going to sing. Someone started shouting "MOUNTAIN SOUL!", which brought a smile to her face. Since we saw that Harlan was NOT in the set list anymore, we took that as our chance to scream for "Harlan", and crossed our fingers.

The SN set consisted of "Crazy Arms" -featuring Pete on steel, YAAY for Pete returning to us! We told him we were SUPER happy to have us back before the show, and he showed us exactly WHY we were so happy to have him back during "Crazy Arms". That boy knows what he's doing on the steel. Crazy Arms was followed by "Why Baby Why" and then launched into our highlight of the show, as with every show--- the coveted Mountain Soul set! "Bramble and the Rose" kicked it off. And I've got to re-iterate -- adding the drums to the song takes it to a different level, and I just don't like it. I'm missing the actual acoustic and raw feel of the song, the drums take away so much from the song.

Patty told the crowd the story of "Busted", and how the original lyrics were about cotton, but they used the original coal mining lyrics for her version, and then proudly boasted the song had no chorus, so her husband Emory Gordy Jr (which drew large cheers from our table!) wrote a chorus for it. She felt like Harlan would be proud of what Emory added to the song, and then looked up and said "Uhhh- I think, Harlan!'", which got a chuckle from the crowd.

After "Busted", Patty turned to the band and mouthed "Harlan", looked over at us and said "Well, I don't want anyone to leave disappointed…" and launched into an INCREDIBLE version of Harlan. Whew. It was spot on - Patty, Sydni and Garry all sounded great, the fiddles were great- just every aspect of it was insane. This should be a staple in the set list.

After honoring our request, the girls launched the fiddles into "The Boys are Back in Town", another huge hit with the audience.

Probably one of the best of the night followed, "Here I Am", and then Todd Lombardo did his guitar solo to launch "Halfway Down".

She dedicated the next song to all the politicians, and sang 'The Trouble with the Truth", before making us all get on our feet to "teach us the words" to "Blame it On Your Heart" . I think we did her proud during the song, and then as she did her ever famous "SAY WHAT!?" she walked over to us and popped the microphone in Jackie's face, who did us all proud!

As they started the music to close the set with "I'm That Kind of Girl", people started to sit down, and Patty said "Don't you dare sit down!" with a huge smile on her face, and said this was for all the girls. Women AND Men all sang along.

Luckily for us, Patty obliged with our incredibly loud cheering (and Larry's wife started chanting 'PATTY! PATTY!' next to me -- I knew I liked this lady!) and came out for an encore. I started screaming for "Diamond in my Crown" -- which was really my goal all along. Patty told everyone she'd love to do all the songs being called out, but they had to be somewhere the following night. We were sure to announce we knew that -- and we'd be there too, which made her laugh and say then tomorrow night she would oblige. (Which we were sure to note, and see if it would really happen!) The set list shows "My Old Friend the Blues" OR "Too Many Memories", and this night she chose to honor Stephen Bruton and close out her show with "Too Many Memories", and received another standing ovation with a very loud cheering crowd.

We were fortunate enough to have Patty come out and sign for us after the show, which is always the icing on the cake!

(It was FANTASTIC to finally meet up with Larry and his wife Linda - so glad you guys sat with us! I wish we had been able to get with Nelson before the show, too! It makes all the shows so much more fun when we get such a great group of PLN'ers together! I should note that we were missing multiple people who were unable to go this year, and we missed all of you!)