Our Streetcar

There are lots of streetcars in Toronto but this, the Queen Street or the 501, is ours. It is located just two streets to our north and I can see it from my office window. It is clunky, funky, antiquated, and slow but it works...most of the time.

This video and a few others are linked HERE.

Paul Kelly M-Z

The stage is set for night two.

I forgot to mention something from the first night. We exchanged email addresses with a couple of people around us. One guy was jotting down the setlist as Paul played the songs and agreed to send them to me. Another woman who we let squeeze between our barstools was taking photos and agreed to send those to us as well. When I got home that night I read the introduction from the book. It describes how the A to Z shows came about and how the audience reacted and behaved. What he described was exactly what we just witnessed…including the exchanging of email addresses!!

When we arrived at The Dakota Tavern for night two we jumped right up to the queue and found that we were right behind Loren, the woman with the camera the night before. Then up from behind came Jim, the man taking down the setlist from Friday. We had plenty of conversation to pass the time waiting for the door to open. It felt just like a party. Someone pointed behind the queue to the intersection of Dundas and Ossington and we all turned to see Paul Kelly scurrying away to beat the traffic light by himself. Something that is probably a little more difficult for him in Australia.

Our seats this night were nearly the same as before, just a couple spots closer to the back putting our vantage just bit to the side of the stage. Again we were excited and again we were not disappointed. This is not surprising since nearly every one of these songs is a ‘hit’ in our household. Two nights totalling around sixty songs, most of which are emotionally charged, left us feeling like we had been through a couple of marathons. We loved every minute and we are already looking forward to another chance to see him again in the future.





Meet Me In The Middle Of The Air (solo, a capella, single note from the piano for pitch)

Midnight Rain

No You

Nukkanya

Oldest Story in the Book

Other People's Houses

Pretty Place

The Ballad of Queenie and Rover

Randwick Bells

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

The Song of the Old Rake

INTERMISSION

Sweet Guy

Sydney From a 747

They Thought I Was Asleep

Thoughts in the Middle of the Night

To Her Door

Until Death Do Them Part

"V" -- "I have not written a V song, so Dan will entertain you"

When I First Met Your Ma

Wintercoat

X (rated) Outta My Head

You Can Put Your Shoes Under My Bed (solo, piano and harmonica; "This piano is more out of tune tonight than it was yesterday")

You're 39, You're Beautiful, and You're Mine

Zoe

ENCORES:

You Can't Take It With You

You're So Fine

Your Little Sister (Is A Big Girl Now)

From Little Things Big Things Grow

SECOND ENCORE

Summer Rain

Paul Kelly A-L

We were told the doors would open at six for the seven o’clock show. We got there about a half hour early and there were only five or six people ahead of us in the queue standing in the light rain. It was a friendly lot and we all exchanged Paul Kelly stories while we waited. Finally the doors opened right on time. Since we had been to the venue a couple of times before we knew exactly where we wanted to sit and had prearranged our game plan to get our favourite spot. While I paid the admission at the door Toni scurried down the stairs and straight to the bar securing our vantage point while others sort of floundered among the tables and chairs.

Now you may be wondering why we so intent on getting to both of these shows on back to back nights. Kelly has been putting on what he calls “A-Z” concerts for a few years now. They are career retrospectives in which he performs songs from his large catalogue in alphabetical order. At least one song for each letter. No songs are repeated on the two nights and they are performed semi-acoustic as a duo, Paul and his nephew Dan Kelly, playing all the guitars, harmonica, and piano. His goal is to perform the songs as close to the original demo form as possible.

As we waited for the show to start we quickly struck up conversations with people on either side of us at the bar. One of them had travelled from Ann Arbor and was meeting people from Montreal and West Virginia. Another couple had come in from Kingston, Ontario. Later, during the intermission I met a young woman who was obviously Australian. I knew she couldn’t have travelled that far. It turned out she had just moved to Toronto four months earlier. She had seen Paul Kelly perform this series a few times before moving however it was at arenas and she paid $70 per ticket!

As soon as Paul took the stage it was clear we were in for something special. For one thing they did not oversell it and there was no one standing in front of us. The stage was really just a six inch raised platform and Kelly was no more than fifteen feet from us. The sound was perfect for the room. The best part of the setting was the audience. They were all in rapt attention. No one was speaking at all as if were in church. All this enhanced the power of the performance and the songs, all of which we all knew intimately. I cannot think of another concert where I felt like I was so in tune with the artist and the audience. It was truly a communal event.

To the side of the stage was a pile white cards with large black letter on each. He started the show with “A” on a big easel and when he moved to “B” he would change the card on the easel. On a couple of occasions he forgot to move to the next letter the audience would remind him politely between songs. We even got an extra “K” song out of the deal. He is not one to break his contract.

We bought a copy of his book, “How To Make Gravy”. It is a companion book to this concert series. In it he describes how he came to write all the songs along with snapshots of his life and career. After the show Paul came out and spent time with everyone and he signed our book, “To Bill and Toni, Kansas City Here I Come, Paul Kelly”.

All the way home in the cab we were reveling in all the great songs we had just heard and pinching ourselves when we realized that we would be back the next night to do it all over again.

Adelaide

Anastasia Changes Her Mind (a capella, solo, with hamonica breaks)

Before Too Long

Blues For Skip (haunting work from Dan)

Careless

Coma

Deeper Water (beyond great)

Down To My Soul

Dumb Things

Every Fucking City

Everything's Turning To White

Foggy Fields of France

INTERMISSION

From St. Kilda to Kings Cross

Gift That Keeps On Giving (brilliant)

God Told Me To

Hard Love

How To Make Gravy (stupendous)

I Can't Believe We Were Married

If I Could Start Today Again (could have heard a pin drop)

I Wasted Time

I Was Hoping You'd Say That (PK at ancient upright piano)

Just About To Break

Keep On Coming Back

Keep On Driving

Look So Fine, Feel So Low

ENCORE: King of Fools (yes, out of sequence, alpha-wise)

Little Decisions

Leaps and Bounds

Paul Kelly intro

I stumbled on to Paul Kelly quite by accident. In early 1987 I received a CD in the mail from one of the record labels. It contained one song each from several new artists who were scheduled to have new albums that year. Right from the start there was one song that jumped out and grabbed me. It was Kelly’s song, “Before Too Long”. To me it was reminiscent of the acoustic style of The Beatles middle period, my favourite era (think of a mash up of some songs from "Help!"). When his Gossip CD came out I was ready and I devoured it as I did with all of his subsequent albums over the years. I have never been disappointed and Paul Kelly is right at the top of my ‘desert island’ list.

In 1988 Paul Kelly and The Messengers were the opening act at an outdoor concert at Smithville Lake in support of their second US release, Under The Sun. They would never play Kansas City again. As an Australian band it was simply too costly to tour America extensively and their efforts only garnered them a limited cult fan base. Future tours got smaller and smaller hitting only the largest North American cities.

About a month ago I got an email from his new manager, John Porter. I met John in New York last year when he was managing Carrie Rodriguez. His email included Paul Kelly’s itinerary. He was hitting five cities for two nights each. L.A., Vancouver, Chicago, New York, and…Toronto! I couldn’t believe it. He was scheduled for a Friday and Saturday and only charging $15. I immediately called the venue, The Dakota Tavern, and was devastated to find that both shows were sold out! What a rollercoaster. I quickly wrote John to see if he could get me on the guest list for Saturday night. He was encouraging but couldn’t be certain for three or four days. I called the venue back and put my name on the waiting list for Friday. I was assured that it was hopeless and my only chance would be to stop by the day of the show and hope for some no shows.

By the time Friday rolled around we were still undecided on our plan of action. We had received a commitment that we were on the guest list for Saturday. It was a bit cool out and raining steadily so we were starting to lose our enthusiasm for standing in line for what was probably a fruitless venture. After much discussion that morning we were leaning toward blowing it off. Five minutes later the phone rang and it was the venue. They had some cancellations and would we want them? We were in!

to be continued...