Cris Williamson Blazes Brightly
in Two Vermont Concerts

Sage Russell

Cris Williamson recently made two con-
cert appearances in Vermont, one at Mid-
dlebury College on September 20th to
kick off a five-day festival, “Celebrating
the Feminine”, and one in Putney on Oc-
tober 6th, in a benefit for the Women’s
Crisis Center of Brattleboro.

Although both concerts were good, the
Middlebury concert was truly special. It

‘ may well be the best Cris Williamson

concert I’ve ever been to. Perhaps it was
because she had a bad cold and therefore
talked more than ususal. Perhaps it was
because she was appearing solo, ac-
companying herself on the piano and
guitar, and had to rely on a more intimate
repertoire. Perhaps it was because the au-
dience responded so strongly to her mu-
sic and she responded back.

In her mid-fourties, after practically a
lifetime of making music, Cris William-
son is at the top of her form. She says
herself that she is better than ever, and
it’s true. Williamson brings the passion
and poetry of her whole life to the music

she is making now. The music from The
Changer and the Changed is still as
fresh as when we first heard it fifteen
years ago. But back then she simply
hadn’t done enough living to summon
the power with which she sang James
Taylor’s “Millworker”, or the depth of
feeling she brought to Leonard Cohen’s
“Sisters of Mercy.”

Anyone can listen to her albums and get
something from them. What you can’t
get except in a live concert is Cris her-
self; the stories she tells, the spell she
weaves. The two most most moving sto-
ries she told in Middlebury had similar
themes. The first was the introduction to
her song “Mother, Mother” about a man
with AIDS who has been estranged from
his mother for years and is seeking rec-
onciliation before he dies. The second
introduced a new song “Ongoing,” about
a fonner lover.

The Middlebury concert was a solo per-

formance which allowed Williamson to
set a mood in the first set and build on its

7

 

November 1991

intensity in the second. She had the au-
dience completely with her throughout.
This was one of the most varied audi-
ences I have seen at a Williamson con-
cert. There were lots of men, lots of
straight people, and lots of college stu-
dents, all unfamiliar with her music.
Their excitement as they discovered
this music was palpable. I have known
and loved Cris Williamson’s music for
years and it meant a lot to me to have
men, straight people and students par-
ticipate in something that has been so
central to lesbian culture (our music)
and find it equally moving.

The concert in Putney was also very
good, but followed a more familiar for-
mat. Cris shared the stage with Tret
Fure, whose music was the focus of the
first set. Cris took center stage for the
second set. I like Tret’s music and I
find her stage presence down to earth,
warm and funny; a refreshing contrast
to some of Cris’ more rarified flights of
fancy. Nevertheless, their styles are
very different, and when they share the
stage, the concert loses some of its co-
herence. I

Much of Tret’s music is rock and roll
oriented, and she has greater need of
drums and other back—up instruments
than Cris does. (Cris doesn’t need them
at all). since touring with a band is pro-
hibitively expensive, the solution they
have devised is to take a computerized
keyboard and program it to reproduce
the back\up instruments. Tret pops in a
diskette, flips a switch with her foot,
and voila, it’s Tret Fure and her All-
Girl band, sounding just like the al-
bums.While I appreciate their dilema, I
find this solution distancing. It’s dis-
concerting to be in a room filled with
music made by invisible people. Al-
though Tret played her guitar, I usually
couldn’t hear it. And it did occur to me
to wonder why, having gone that far,
they didn’t program the vocals as well.

Having said all this, why do I think it
was a good concert? Because Cris Wil-
liamson doesn’t simply make music.
She makes magic. V