Hello, Auto Tuners! I told you I wouldn’t be able to resist posting on my springtime concert-goings-on.

Last night I saw Brandi Carlile and Ray LaMontagne at the waterfront in Bangor, Maine. And it was wonderful.

I worship at the church of live music, and if there’s anything better than being outdoors, amongst happy, easy-going people, with gorgeous music filling the air, I haven’t yet found it.

The Bangor waterfront stage is a great, kind of funny set-up, right off the little downtown area on the shores of the Penobscot River. It’s also right next to — and I mean RIGHT NEXT TO — working train tracks, so performers are occasionally interrupted by a hooting, passing train. The stage is flanked by screened set-up areas and speaker arrangements that are mostly transparent — meaning the audience can pretty much see everything they’re usually not meant to observe. (I hoped for the hilarity of a costume change, but didn’t spy one.)

The best part of the stage set-up, at least from where I was sitting, was that the back of the stage was wide open, and above the performers’ heads was a crisp white church steeple high on the river’s opposite shore. After darkness fell, the steeple was illuminated. It was beautiful and poetic, lending even more of a spirit of worship and rejoicing to the evening than I already felt.

I heard the people behind us mention the steeple a few times throughout the evening, clearly as enchanted as  I was. The crowd — all ages, though heavily college-age — seemed so pleased to be out on a (fairly) nice summer’s night, ready for a good show, and many, many in the audience seemed to know each other. I witnessed more waving and chasing down of old friends than I have ever before seen at an event like this.

It was just lovely. And so was the music! Brandi Carlile was a rockin’ little sprite, throwing herself into every song, letting her voice soar and break and clearly loving every moment she was on stage. I burst into tears when she started in on “The Story,” just knowing it would be great (and it was). Ray LaMontagne was more reserved, as is his nature, but delivered a super smooth, controlled performance standing in a triangle of light made all the more visible and dramatic by the mist hanging in the night air. And the openers, the Secret Sisters, were fantastic — I recommend checking them out if you like kind of old-fashioned country with delicious harmonies.

I left the show so grateful to have had the chance to be there, so glad for Bangor that it can get people like this up into the boonies, and so excited about next week’s museical adventure.

More soon.

PS: I don’t think Mama Kitt will mind if I report that she has welcomed Baby #2, and all is well!

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