Stoughton Opera House

Stoughton, WI

October 17, 2010

Review By: Debi

A dream come true is the best way to describe this night. It has been a few years since I’ve had the opportunity to see Patty in concert and she and her band were absolutely amazing!!! My husband Randy and son Noah came along with me and our seats were front row center stage! The Stoughton Opera house is a very small and intimate venue. I don’t think it held more than a couple hundred people but the inside was beautiful. The acoustics were fantastic and Patty even commented on them and said it would be a great place to make a record! Wouldn’t that be something!! When we got to our seats, we realized that we would literally be about 4 feet from Patty and the band! Noah who is 8 years old and learning how to play the guitar was fascinated by all the instruments set up on the stage.

Patty came on stage shortly after 7:30 and opened up with “The Nights Too Long”. I have never heard her sing that song live before so it was a real treat for me! The audience was an older crowd and very quiet at first but Patty changed that soon enough!! After “The Nights Too Long”, came “Nothing But The Wheel”. The crowd was still pretty mellow at this point but they began to perk up a bit when she launched into “On Down The Line”. Just for a second I wished I was not in the front row so I could get up and dance!! Before the next song she started talking about all the artists that have influenced her over the years and then spoke of George Jones. Randy looked at me with a big grin on his face because “You Don’t Seem To Miss Me” is his favorite song! This is the first time that I’ve heard Garry sing with her and thought their voices blended very well together. “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am” came next and she nailed it!! The power in her vocals is incredible when she gets to the main chorus. I think it was after this song that she took some time to introduce the band. And what an amazing band they are! I, of course, had to holler as loud as I could when she introduced Deanie!! Then the band started to play “You Can Feel Bad” and I was over the moon ecstatic!! I love love love this song!! From there she went right into “Lovin' All Night” and by this time she had the crowd bouncing in their seats---even the older folks!!

Next she put the spotlight on Pete and he started playing his awesome intro to “Crazy Arms”. I just have to say that this song live is incredible!! After we were all spellbound by that performance, she got us toe tapping to “Why Baby Why” and joked a little afterwards that she’s afraid one of these days she’s going to miss one of the “Whys”! She then proceeded to talk about creating the Mountain Soul record describing it as a mix of bluegrass and Appalachian music and mountain music. She went on to explain that the fans loved it so much that she decided to create a Mountain Soul II. I was crossing my fingers that she would do “Bramble” here and she did!!! Her voice was perfect and Randy (who is not familiar with some of her recent stuff) just looked at me and said “Wow!!” Next she introduced “Busted” by giving the background of the song and mentioning how she changed the lyrics back to the original coal mining lyrics. The folks around me seemed to get into this song, a lot of them dancing in their seats a bit! Deanie and Sydni put their fiddles together and we got to hear “Boys Are Back In Town”!!! I was so happy to see this one live again and see Deanie play her heart out!!

Patty then took us back to her earlier days with “Here I Am”. As always, her voice was incredible and I was totally in awe! Next she gave the spotlight over to Todd and he gave us an awesome solo before tearing into “Halfway Down”. And when I say tearing into I mean tearing into. He tore that song up! He is one very talented guitar player!! He had everyone rockin’ in their seats! Before the next song, Patty started to ask the audience if anyone had ever had trouble… had trouble with tuning a mandolin? Deanie was struggling to get her mandolin in tune and there was some funny banter between Patty and Deanie about the fact that she had better hurry up and get it in tune and she had had all day to do it!! She then asked the audience if anyone had ever had “Trouble With The Truth”!! After “Trouble” she got us all on our feet and told us she was going to make us sing now. During “Blame” she came around with the microphone and Randy and Noah both got to sing!! Noah is very shy and I don’t think much came out of his mouth but it was sure funny to see his big wide blue eyes though! Keeping us on our toes, she went right into “That Kind of Girl” The crowd was definitely more energized now!! After “Girl” she left the stage. Everyone remained standing and cheering and in a minute or so she came back and told us we could all sit down now. Then she talked about the Mountain Soul II record and all the fabulous artists she was able to sing with. At this point my heart was pounding a mile a minute because I just knew she was going to mention Emmylou and sing “Diamond” and sure enough she did!! I don’t think I have the words to describe how awesome this was. It was truly amazing! I was so in awe that it took me a moment when the song was done before I was able to get up and give a standing ovation!!

After the show I made sure to ask for one of the set lists and was surprised to see that she had listed “My Old Friend The Blues” or “Too Many Memories” as her encore. While I love both of these songs, I am so grateful that she changed it to “Diamond”!!

As I was waiting around to see if Patty would be coming out to sign autographs, I got the pleasure of meeting a fellow patty-loveless.net member Mike! It was so nice chatting with you and hopefully we can meet up at another show in the future! After a bit I had to get going because my little guy was sleepy and had school the next day. On the way home Randy kept saying how she is the only artist that he has seen that sounds even better live than on her records! I couldn’t agree more. I keep thinking about the lyrics in her song, “Last In A Long Lonesome Line”. “They say the blood in my body is agein’ like wine”. I think her voice ages like fine wine. She just keeps getting better and better!!