Dar Williams, write up by kathy
August 20, 2006, Lowell, MA


This past weekend Chris and I trekked up to Lowell, MA to see Dar Williams at their outdoor Summer Music Series. It was a gorgeous day, and tickets were cheap, so we thought…why the heck not??

Lowell MA is an artsy mill town. It being such, there were quite a few frighteningly barren areas of empty storefronts (the dead mill town part)–and then quite a few beautiful, artsy areas (the artsy part). We passed a Jack Kerouac monument (apparently he briefly stayed in Lowell?)-and tried to take pictures, only to find out that the battery to our digital camera wasn’t properly charged (phooey!). There are several art museums in Lowell, the most intriguing of which was a revolving art museum! If we had more time we would have gone in.

We ate at a cute little cafe called “Brew’d Awakening” (har har). It appeared to be the hangout for college art majors-which was fine with us. Many of their photography/painting projects were hung on the walls. I had a peach smoothie and Chris had iced chai, and we both had yummy veggie sandwiches and played Scrabble a few times (I won each time 🙂 ).
The outdoor arena was very small and there were blankets and lawn chairs set out everywhere. Chris and I got there early enough to set ourselves a decent spot underneath a shady tree.

Everyone was so friendly there, and there was a tent serving all kinds of organic goodies and ice cream ( can you guess which I went for?).

The concert started pretty early (7:30) and lasted until almost 10. This is our 3rd time seeing Dar in concert, and she is always amazing, but this time we both have to say it was the best. Maybe it was the atmosphere–the weather was perfect–not to hot/not too cool, unbuggy, clear with a light breeze that seemed to carry her songs. Dar herself is so humble and so tiny and cute! She always tries to tell little stories about her songs. That night she had a bit of a cold–which you couldn’t tell when she sang until she had to stop in the middle of one song to cough and sneeze.Then she continued the song as if nothing happened. She took many requests of old faves, like “I won’t be your Yoko Ono”, and
“Spring Street”. Sometimes she even forgot the lyrics to her own songs and would stop and laugh and then start again. During one song a fire truck howled around the corner, but turned its siren off when it came near us.
Everyone was in good spirits and sang along. Their appeared to be a lack of lighters that night (so we know the fire truck wasn’t intended for us!), so many people waved their lit up cell phones in the air.
Oh, and who could forget that Dar did her own unplugged version of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”. It sounded awesome.

One little kid made Dar a little star ornament, and she was so touched that she hung the ornament off of her guitar during the rest of the concert.

She’s so friggen cute.

Overall we had a great time and hope to attend more of this summer music series next summer. They’re all a good deal, the money goes toward their local arts planning committee, and lowell is surprisingly not too far a jaunt (about an hour 45 min from Bratt, so if you’re in Mass it’s probably only 45 min or so).

We were also happy that night to find out that the parking garage was letting everyone go without having to pay for the day’s parking. Awww, what a nice end to the day!

Check Dar out here :
http://www.darwilliams.com/media.html