Live Music Is Good for You but Are You Good for It?

My partner and I go to a lot of shows.  It’s our primary source of entertainment.  By “show” I mean what we used to call “concert” but that seems anachronistic now, as if I am referring to classical music, and I most certainly am not, although many of the acts we see are classics in their own genre.   In the last five months, we have seen the Who, the Avett Brothers, attended the Fall Moon Festival with five fabulous woman singer-songwriters (Heather Maloney, Amythyst Kiah, Catie Curtis, Girl Blue, and Jocie Adams), John Hiatt, Marty Stuart, the Flatlanders, Phish and Cracker.  We have traveled to Connecticut, Boston, Providence, and Newport to see these shows.  The least enjoyable was the Who at Fenway, but that’s another blog.

Luckily for us, a recent study shows that going to see live music can help us live longer.  While we don’t attend shows every two weeks, which apparently increases “happiness, contentment, productivity, and self-esteem” by 21%, it makes me happy to know that something we love to do is good for us.  Like finding out eating eggs supports brain health, energy, and a healthy disposition; dark chocolate contains antioxidants and lowers blood pressure; and drinking IPA’s may accelerate metabolism.  Of course, all these studies come with conditions (insert eye roll here), limitations, and we-need-more-studies, but hot damn this is all great news!

 Marty Stuart would never have made this list except he was one of the most charming and knowledgeable narrators on Ken Burns’ Country Music documentary.  I thought he was just some country dude who didn’t make it that big.  It turns out he was a mandolin prodigy who played with Lester Flatt when he was 14 years old and then was in Johnny Cash’s backing band.  He and the Fabulous Superlatives were decked out in old-style country matching suits and played their hearts out to a sold-out Narrows.  It was very much a show, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. 

The next night we went to Boston to seeThe Flatlanders, which consist of Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock, who were unapologetically scruffy, wrinkled, and spontaneous.  They each played guitar and had another fellow playing electric solos in the background, so it was a four-guitar-with-nothing-else show.  They had a set list but deviated as one or another saw fit.  It couldn’t have been more different from the intentional and polished show we had seen the night before, and just as enjoyable. 

Phish sold out two shows at the Dunk in downtown Providence, an arena that houses a minor league hockey team and multiple college graduations, among other events (and for my Fort Wayne peeps, it’s an exact replica of the Coliseum). Even through the interminable second set (way too jammy--clearly, we were not on the same drugs as everyone else) I was impressed with the band’s versatility as they explored reggae, folk, and rock and roll. It was worth seeing for sure, even if I didn’t get to see Blaze On,  No Men in No Man’s Land, or Kill Devil Falls.  

Despite the differences among these shows, passion, skill, and generosity were common factors.  It was a gift to see master musicians reworking and reframing what they had done for decades into something familiar but new.  But I am also taken by the fact that these mostly sold out shows were made up of white male musicians. The Fall Moon Festival’s outstanding lineup of women folk singers played to a half-empty room.  The Festival itself felt DIY, with volunteers checking people in (and thankfully not doing a great job, so we were easily in the front row).  The oldest woman at the Festival, Catie Curtis, had toured with Ani DiFranco in the 90’s, made 14 albums, played Lilith Fair and Carnegie Hall, and has had songs featured in multiple television shows.  Now she is in graduate school, presumably because making music is not a viable retirement option for her.  None of the men we saw needed a second career.

The contrast between the Fall Moon Festival and the male-headlined shows got me thinking. I wonder who else we are not seeing, either because they are playing at tiny venues we don’t know about or because, like Catie Curtis, they have had to focus on other ways to make a living. 

If I want to be a critical consumer of music, it is time to move outside my comfort zone and go to shows headlined by women and musicians of color.  These choices matter.  If I am preaching and teaching critical literacy and valuing the voices of indigenous folks and people of color, then it is time to live it as well.  We have Red Molly coming up in the spring, but it’s clear we will have to work a little harder to find ways to support women artists.  I certainly can buy that live music is good for you, but perhaps it can be even better if we take the time to seek out artists who are not big names.