Peter Viney's Blog

Norah Jones
Support: Emily Elbert

The Forum, Bath
Friday 10 November 2023

SET LIST
My Heart Is Full
I’m Alive
What am I To You?
Something Is Calling To You
Sunrise
After The Fall
Chasing Pirates
Thinking About You
Don’t Know What It Means
Little Broken Hearts
The Nearness of You
Say No More
Come Away With Me
Nightingale
Turn Me On

ENCORE
Long Way Home
Don’t Know Why

Norah Jones – vocal, piano, keyboard, guitar
Brian Blades – drums
Chris Whiteley- double bass, bass guitar, backing vocal 
? – acoustic and electric guitar pedal steel

The time is a sore point. Our E-tickets say clearly ‘Start 7 pm.’ We thought it a bit early but ate rather too early for us, at 5 and were outside at 6.30 – we hadn’t been sure where it was. The doors opened at 6.50. They opened the inner doors at 7.15, the support started at 7.30, Norah Jones at 8.30. That would be normal, but most (all other?) seated venues would just put 7.30 on the ticket, plus ‘and support.’ Our tickets for Saturday for Natalie Merchant say ‘start 6.30’ but enquiries reveal this means 8. Annoying.

It’s an odd venue and our first time. It’s around the same size as Bournemouth Pavilion, smaller I think than Poole Lighthouse Concert Hall, and in comparison to either it has woefully inadequate old toilets and poor public areas. The band got an impeccable sound which may be its virtue, though I’d think this sound team would get it right anywhere. I think its main attraction is that American performers really love Bath, and waxed lyrical about having a day off here.

Ravi Shankar passes on powerful musical genes and extreme good looks to both daughters, Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar. We have seen Norah Jones twice before, the first time at Hammersmith at the time of the first album, the one that was the inevitable soundtrack in every restaurant and wine bar for over two years. The concession stall was selling the Come Away With Me CD at £25 and the de-luxe CD at £50. I saw those ludicrous prices and looked no further. Daft. This happens so often on concession stands. If you sell at list price you’re really winning hands down compared to giving 30% to 70% to Amazon.

 Norah Jones has a perfect band. It’s compact, just a four piece. As we walk in past the tour bus, and two equipment trucks, it’s hard to credit. She carries her own lighting set up, a unique one. However the amps are tiny practice size amps mic’d into a large PA system.

Brian Blades, who we have seen before, is simply one of the best and most sympathetic drummers in the world. Chris Whitely alternated bass guitar and double bass and backing vocals, and x played electric guitar, acoustic guitar and pedal steel. Then Norah Jones is astonishingly good as a pianist. As well as excursions to electric keyboard and electric guitar.

I’d perused setlist.com before the show and realized that the running order and selection differ every night, and that ther are only a couple of songs shared with her 2021 live double album. Then again she has a ot to choose from, not only solo, but The Little Willies, Billie Jo and Norah, The Peter Malick Group and Puss ’n’ Boots too.

It’s an atmospheric start, instrumental and brooding until Norah Jones walks on. I’m Alive is from Pick Me Up Off The Floor. The studio track was produced by Jeff Tweedy, who played guitar. It’s co-written between them. I’ve been playing the album expecting to hear several in the show, but there will be just the two.

I’m Alive sets out the stall, before a sublime What Am I To You? from Feels Like Home. The bass on acoustic bass makes it, though we have a Steinway piano not Wurlitzer electric piano and Hammond organ this time. Wurlitzers had a uniqe sound (Supertramp’s Dreamer) because there is actual percussion inside. So, quiz question? Drums and Hammond on the original? Levon Helm and Garth Hudson. Yes, Brian Blades can get that solidity too. I always wonder about Steinways. Concert halls will already have one. Does someone like Norah Jones transport her own? When I worked backstage at Bournemouth Winter Gardens, our Saturday night job was rolling off the variety show Steinway and rolling on the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra identical Steinway. I assumed it was classical snobbishness, but our old piano tuner used to do the winter Gardens and explained that (a) you tne them even if you’ve just rolled them to one side, and (b) the variety show piano is tuned very slightly sharp to make it brighter- he called it dance band tuning. So do piuanists transport them? I know Victoria Wood must have, because her grand piano was white.

By Something Is Calling You I’ve realized its her long time collaborator Brian Blades on drums. There’s no other drummer quite like him. I note it’s a basic kit, bass drum, snare, tom tom, bass tom-tom. No vast expanse of drums occupyig half the stage, but it’s subtle, uses everything to its full. The song is by Jesse Harris.

On Sunrise the lighting plot is coming into its own. Pedal steel is introduced. You can see when artistes have a past album in their minds. This is the second one from Feels Like Home, with one more to come.

After The Fall is from Little Broken Hearts. It reminds me of Leonard Cohen’s European excursions. They reproduce the feel superbly, given that they don’t have the string quartet in avant garde style of the studio recording. The guitar manages to reproduce the strings effect on its own, with the complex bass line and really far out drumming.

Chasing Pirates is from the Fall, the album with far too many dogs on the sleeve photos. Gorgeous song though, and an opener too. At some point she decided to put the strongest song at the start. Good advice. Norah Jones walks across to stand behind by the electric keyboard for this. I don’t know how to start again … she does love songs with don’t know as the refrain. I love My mind’s racing from chasing pirates again.

Thinking About You is from Not Too Late. I have the CD single too. I think it came out before the album. She stays on the electric keyboard. Like most songs here it strips back to the basics … no ethereal Hammond nor horn section. You don’t feel any loss because she hypnotizes with her voice. When that album came out in 2007, Rosie’s Lullaby was the one I was most taken with. I didn’t expect to hear it though with its lovely pedal steel part it would fit.

Don’t Know What It Means adds to the AI analysis of her lyrics which would insist on having I don’t know in an imitation. It’s the Puss ’n’ Boots track from No Fools, No Fun. She straps on electric guitar and moves stage centre. Much more conventional country rock, Hey you! Don’t tell me what to do. It rocks out with two guitars.

Little Broken Hearts is another album title track, the second from the 2012 album. She stays on electric guitar. They add pedal steel, and in places the bass guitar is plated right up above the 12th fret to give a percussive effect.

The band leave the stage. It’s just Norah Jones, back on the Steinway for The Nearness of You. She recorded this Hoagy Carmichael song back on Come Away With Me as the final track and the album, after all her best-selling ever, dominates the rest of the set. The 1940 song has had a few hit versions … Glen Miller, Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong, Dinah Shore, Bob Manning. As on her 2001 version, solo voice and piano is all it needs.

Say No More is the other song from Pick Me Up Off The Floor. It’s co-written with Sarah Oda and a step away from her normal style. Brian Blades astonishing drum part is what he played on the original, but I miss the trumpet from the original. Still, a great song.

Then the BIG ONE. Come Away With Me. A voice behind us said emotionally,’I’ve been waiting fifteen years to hear this one!’ Well it’s my third time live. You don’t tire of it. The whispered vocal, the sound of the piano and bass. You’ve heard it over a dozen dinners. Gorgeous.

Nightingale is still on that album. The concert goer in me knows we’re getting near the end as the best-known songs come together.

I was right, the rolling piano intro brings us into her soul singer mode, her Etta James mode, for Turn Me On. Not an original, but by John D. Loudermilk.  Her verson made it famous, but this is from the writer of Tobacco Road, Ebony Eyes, Paper Tiger, Abilene, Indian Reservation. It sounds remarkably like an Etta James Chess excursion. You don’t think of Nashville writers talking about turning someone on (whether sexual or with a spliff!) A marvellous ender. 

ENCORES

The Long Way Home is a Tom Waits/ Kathleen Brendon song which Norah covered on Feels Like Home. It’s a joy to hear that bouncy, smple, loping country bass pattern and pedal steel.

Then the final closer, the second encore, can only be I Don’t Know Why. That’s the song that started Come Away With Me. It was written by Jesse Harris but custom-written for her voice and definitely female perspectve. It still remains enigmatic. 

It was an extraordinaily good concert. A delight to go back to listening to Norah Jones. I had years when she was an automatic purchase, CD singles, collaborations, all of it. I’d kind of forgotten. A thrill to be remiNorah Jones 2023nded.

SUPPORT: EMILY ELBERT

 Emily Elbert is a fellow Texan with eight albums behind her. Her eight song set was all originals, and strong as they are, an audience is challenged by unfamiliar material. Having said that 1000 Ways to Kiss The Ground was instantly catchy. True Power was an audience singalong. She has great vocal range up into Joni territory, whistles and plays acoustic and electric guitars. The lyrics sound interesting on first listen. I can’t find a set list online. Another tip_ if you’re support, announce the title of every song loudly and clearly before you start. That way people can trace them.

I’ll add a set list if someone can supply ne.