GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE JULY 19, 1996

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EVENINGS OUT

Singer blends old and new material at Cain Park show

by Brynna Fish

Joan Armatrading will always make me think of Alice. She was the woman I went to see a Joan Armatrading concert with in 1983. That night, at an outdoor concert venue in Manhattan, Alice reached for my hand, and Joan's music seared my heart.

I remember being struck that such a huge voice could come out of such a small person. Word on the street at the time was that Joan

ᄆ

Joan Armatrading

EVE MUZIC

was ill-maybe lupus. A survey of all the lesbians in the New York audience made me wonder if there was another, easier to read, word on the street.

Armatrading hit the road on June 15 for the second leg of her What's Inside tour, an album that Armatrading has declared "her most personal work to date.” The album, released by RCA Victor, is Armatrading's fourteenth release of new material in twenty-one years. Her current single from the album, Shapes and Sizes, has been enthusiastically received by radio audiences and has soared quickly to the top of the Triple A charts in both Gavin and the Album Network.

Born in the West Indies and raised in Birmingham, England, Armatrading gets around. She's made over 200 concert appearances in the past fifteen months in Europe, Great Britain, South Africa, Australia, Japan, Israel and the U.S. Besides sporting two Grammy nominations for Best Female Vocalist, 18 gold records and 10 platinum records, she has just completed a new video of Everyday Boy.

Armatrading is also enjoying a second generation of fame, as rocker Melissa Etheridge recently recorded a cover of her hit, The Weakness In Me, which Armatrading has called "one of the best versions that I've heard of somebody doing one of my tunes."

Etheridge has been joined on VH-1 by Joan Osborne, Jewel, Paula Cole and Sophie B. Hawkins-who all team up to sing Armatrading's Love and Affection.

The July 1 show at Cain Park in Cleveland Heights was close to sold out. The audience, which consisted of mostly lesbians, lesbianfriendly gay guys, a slew of preand postWoodstock hippies, and a few yuppies for good measure, waited patiently through the two opening acts. Armatrading hit the stage at 9:20, one hour and fifty minutes into the 7:30 show, and launched right into I'm Lucky. Then came Promised Land and Crazy. Seventeen songs later, she started the first of two encores at 10:40.

She stood tall and commanding even regal-in her casual black outfit embraced by a single white spot-light beam throughout the entire show. Her band hovered unobtrusively in warm washes of red, blue or green light, but Armatrading always held center stage.

Armatrading mixed old and new, and there's lots of both to choose from. She wrapped the audience in love as she completed an eight song set with her full band (keyboards, bass, guitar, drum, percussion not to mention her own guitar talents displayed throughout the evening on four different guitars). She brought out a cellist and violinist for a four song interlude of Merchant of Love, Everyday Boy, Shapes and Sizes, and In Your Eyes-all from her latest release.

She finished the show with her full band completing the set by performing four old favorites including Show Some Emotion and Me Myself I. With her eyes closed through most of her songs, she was more meditative rather than belting out lyrics. At times she held her hands out, palm to palm, fingertip to finger tip as if she were prayerfully singing in an empty cathedral.

Armatrading set the crowd down gently with her second encore Willow. Reminiscent of Ferron's Willow, this lullaby could have rolled around the Cain Park glen till sunrise. If what we witnessed outside is any reflection of What's Inside, I can't wait for what's next.

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