Last night on top of the drum show, we went to see Weyes Blood. For those of you who don’t know, Weyes Blood is Natalie Mering, a singer-songwriter with a lovely voice who has captured the hearts of some dedicated fans. I’m not sure if the show was sold out or not last night because Olivia (who is a big fan) bought tickets a while ago, but it was as full as The Sisters of Mercy. When she came on stage, people screamed, “I love you too,” she said.

I suppose the venue might have been a bit too much of a rock club for her. She was soft-spoken with lovely songs and although she didn’t seem to mind, I think seeing her in a nice sit-down theatre would have been more appropriate. A flowing white gown gave her the aura of an angel fallen to Earth, bringing light to the sad humans. Her band was perfunctory and when she broke a string on her acoustic (her not very good-sounding acoustic, I might add), she had no spare. She changed tack and did a different song and when she got the guitar back, it wasn’t tuned. It seemed like she didn’t expect it to be, handing it back to the crew to sort out for her as she couldn’t manage it herself. It seemed odd to me that these details weren’t sorted out, so she could carry on being an angel without issue.

We walked home up the Porto slopes as we have many times this week, so many shows all at the same time and meeting musicians, this is the week to catch up on mixes and all other project responsibilities, including rehearsing for the Spanish and Portuguese shows in November.

But today Virgil came over to visit and we hung out for a couple of hours, we showed him the place, and talked about many musical subjects and living in beautiful countries with a musical background of Peggy Lee, I mean what do you play when Virgil Donati comes to visit? Haha! After he left, I had a sesh with Fred in Minneapolis, and Olivia was going to pick up some small free odd-shaped shelves through “Buy Nothing”. When she got back we hit the supermarket via the second-hand furniture store and bought a €5 green dragon which we think was a draught excluder, although I wore it as a handy scarf on the way to and back from the supermarket.

Music today has been Peggy Lee’s The Fabulous Miss Lee (1963). Born Norma Deloris Egstrom, she wrote 270 songs of her own, an unusual feat for a singer in this era. With Sonny Burke, she wrote and/or sang all the songs for Walt Disney’s The Lady and the Tramp (including He’s A Tramp).

Music Of The Daze