Lail Arad: Founder of The Songs of Joni Mitchell
LAIL Arad first sang a Joni Mitchell song in public at her London school concert at the age of 11. Joni’s biggest British hit, Big Yellow Taxi, was her choice, and it would be her first pick at The Citadel too.
Singer-songwriter Lail first presented The Songs of Joni Mitchell to mark her groundbreaking Canadian counterpart’s 80th birthday, since when she and Manchester-based American singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop have organised two tours and now a summer of special shows and festival appearances.
They have been joined by the varied likes of This Is The Kit’s Kate Stables, cult singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan, Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, Irish singer and composer Lisa Hannigan, David Bowie band member (1995 to 2004) Gail Ann Dorsey, Scottish folk and dream-pop singer-songwriter Rachel Sermanni, BRIT Award winner Emile Sande and American singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sam Amidon.
The latest addition is former Goat Goal band member and folk singer Naima Bock, whose York appearance was only her second with Lail and Jesca, having met them for the first time to rehearse only the day before her debut.
Rather more settled in the ranks is regular pianist Richard Sears, but he was not the only musician to be seated at last Friday’s concert, played to a full house of Mitchell devotees of differing ages, young and much older, split evenly between women and men.
For each solo number, followed by a song with Richard accompanying her on the keys, Naima brought on a chair, then played her guitar cross-legged in bright socks and afterwards returned the chair to from whence it had come, out of view beyond the door to the side.
“I like sitting down,” she later explained. Certainly it added to her looking and sounding very much at home in this nascent association with “Songs Of”, deeper of voice than Lail and Jesca, when performing Tin Angel and A Case of You in Set One and early Mitchell composition Urge For Going and Shades Of Scarlett Conquering, her best number, in Set Two.
Jesca Hoop: Lail Arad’s collaborator and co-organiser for The Songs of Joni Mitchell shows. The York concert was promoted by Joe Coates and The Crescent
The bright white-walled Citadel was looking spick and span after the £300,000 restoration of its meeting spaces and café, all the more so in the early evening daylight. Built as a place of worship and mission centre for the Salvation Army, and still home to the York City Church, the building’s air or reverence lent itself to the tone of the performance.
Always closer to reverent, never irreverent, but with interpretation rather than impersonation at its root, the approach was typified by Lail slowing down Big Yellow Taxi to a stately glide, eschewing Joni’s trademark laugh at the climax too.
Lail incidentally was wearing a shirt from Saskatchewan, in honour of Joni’s formative years there (playing her first paid gig at the Louis Riel Coffee House in Saskatoon). “I bought it on Vinted,” our host admitted, before performing For Free (which presumably the shirt wasn’t).
Introduced by Lail, Jesca had opened Set One with Morning Morgantown, whose melody had ‘stuck in her head for 38 years’ and was newly released to electric guitar accompaniment. Joined by Richard, Jesca’s take on Lessons In Survival, from her favourite Joni record, 1972’s For The Roses, located that survival instinct.
Richard had one solo number, Little Green, from 1971’s Blue, and by now the concert lighting was taking greater effect, whether bathing the walls in green, blue, pink, red or taxi- yellow.
Your reviewer most enjoyed the climax to each half when Lail, Jesca and Naima (now standing) united in harmony, but switching positions, with Richard to their side, first for Night In The City. “How does the first line go?” said a stage-whispering Jesca, promptly answering her own question by breaking into Rainy Night House.
Lail told a story of mistakenly thinking Joni was singing “’A little money riding on the make-beliefs” on Raised On Robbery, until she married a Canadian who put her straight about the “Maple Leafs”, as Set One closed on a surge of Richard’s boogie-woogie piano.
Naima Bock: Making only her second Songs of Joni Mitchell concert appearance in York. Picture: El Hardwick, for Sub Pop Records
The format remained the same in Set Two, opening with Lail in a cappella mode. “This song is from 1969 but it could have been written today,” she said, introducing the anti-war sentiments of The Fiddle And The Drum, her solo highlight.
Jesca picked Night Ride Home and California, either side of Naima’s Set Two contributions. “I know about this next song,” she said, in a nod to her roots in Santa Rosa, in rural northern California, and her years in Los Angeles. “I’m just learning to strum, it’s true,” she chided herself after “fluffing” (in her words) a guitar line. “Thank you, that’s very generous,” came her response to the audience clapping as appreciatively as ever.
Jesca went on to highlight how Joni had been the first female singer-songwriter to divulge details of family, friends and loved ones in her lyrics. “Now we have permission to spill out our experiences, when previously it wasn’t normal.” Step forward Charlie XCX, Self Esteem, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish et al.
Jesca’s rendition of Amelia ensued and then it was time for the grand finale, all four together again for Joni’s Woodstock Festival anthem, Woodstock, the song she did not perform at the August 1969 gathering on account of her manager, David Geffen, fearing the heavy traffic would prevent her arrival at the ABC Television Center in New York to perform it on The Dick Cavett Show. Ironically, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Jefferson Airplane all turned up straight from the festival to join her.
That song “defined not only the festival but the entire generation”, enthused Lail as she took lead vocals, the stage by now resplendent in golden light. She fronted Carey too, where Naima and Jesca’s harmonising was at its most sublime.
Aptly for Both Sides Now, both sides, audience and performers alike, were invited to sing together. All three protagonists took a lead vocal, one each for “I really don’t know clouds at all/love at all/life at all”.
Joni really does know life at all, of course, as Lail, Jesca and Naima’s performances of The Songs of Joni Mitchell testified. Definitely not a “tribute show”, instead they paid her the highest compliment.
Stanley Chow’s poster illustration for The Songs of Joni Mitchell tour with Naima Bock, including The Citadel, York, on July 31