Joanna Connor, Carolyn Wonderland
Two Women on a Friday Night Fling
Grand Emporium
05.04.2001

Review by El Dormido

So I’m beating myself up after walking in the door of the Grand Emporium in the middle of Joanna Connor’s blistering first set cause I’m looking to find Carolyn Wonderland on stage per the advertised double bill that I got in the mail and in the news. But Brody Buster was out of town and Carolyn filled his Friday matinee gig and was done and out by the time I got to 39th & Main.

I have seen Carolyn Wonderland several times before, headlining and opening for other acts, and her music is such a kaleidoscopic purview of American music that I keep wanting to get more and more of it to get a true fix on the matter. She played the blues stage of the KC Blues and Jazz Festival back when Roger Naber had some say in the matter, and he still tells the story how she twisted the heads of the blues purist by showing up with purple streaks in her hair.

So, anyway, she’s got blues chops. She’s also been promoted as a singer in the Janis Joplin mold, but I don’t quite buy that cause I’ve seen Janis so many times in my misspent youth, it doesn’t begin to illustrate how Carolyn sings, really.

The music I’ve heard from Carolyn’s performances is American music, plain and simple. Blues, R&B, a little C&W flavor, but basically plain and honest, good old American roots music. You got to listen to Carolyn and her band, the Imperial Monkeys, and forget any labels, just dig it. Good guitar music and Carolyn. Singing. What a prize!

So I catch up with Carolyn in the parking lot when Joanna breaks and I’m doing my mea culpas about missing her, and she is exceedingly gracious. The band already has all the gear stashed in the van for the trip up to Omaha and Carolyn is signing a handbill for Darlin’ Debbie, using Roger’s Taurus to write on, Darlin’ Debbie who just loves Carolyn and is planning to catch her next at Eureka Springs, AR, but has to have Carolyn’s autograph now, so she does, with a little fish too.

So we agree, Carolyn and I, that it’s American music she does, and she’s relating a story about playing with Vince Welnick, former Grateful Dead keyboard player, at the Inn of the Beginning in Cotati, a very hip spot in Marin County, CA, and it was a low key thing, she was embarrassed about the piano they rented for the show, but how that went off very enjoyably like the show they did in Las Vegas in a very funky part of town where everybody else was so busy that the only people that came to hear her were people who really wanted to hear her, and it was really very nice.

Carolyn’s been a musician since she was 14 and, although she’s a couple of steps above the making gas money level of the business, she is so appreciative of people coming to see her that it’s almost embarrassing, especially since there are folks coming up to her still talking about how wonderful her show was at the Jazz and blues festival how many years ago was it?

She does make enough to keep the rent paid for her cat to have a porch so when Carolyn gets home, she can share it too.

She’s in Austin, TX, by way of Houston and avers there is a zydeco flavor to her music cause it is all a part of Texas music, the Gulf Coast and all, what with L’il Bryan Terry and Step Rideau, among others, working the Houston scene. She headed up to Austin to write with Doug Sahm but unfortunately he passed before she got there.

About playing the matinee show, she said that since Brody had this gig, Roger asked her to do it and so she did. She said that Roger is one of the 3 or 4 people she trusts implicitly in the business across the country. Roger is definitely the business man but when you got people like Carolyn willing to do for him whatever he asks, well, that speaks of some good karma working.

Anyway, I’ve resigned myself to just having to wait until Carolyn’s next trip into town when Joanna Connor’s bass player, Stan Mixon, hails Carolyn and tells her she has to come up the next set and sit in with them. Now this is good. I’m already digging into Joanna Connor and, plus, to get my Carolyn Wonderland fix, I’m going to be satisfied all around!

Joanna Connor is rightly headlining the show tonight. She is a powerful singer and guitar player, solidly in the blues tradition but long past a slavish repetition of the old forms and styles. She’s carved out her own sonic territory of power and passion, mining the long told stories of love and heart ache but not from a victim’s stand point. Her lyrics sing affirmatively, declaratively, of loss and lust as a part of everyone’s experience, not just a man done wrong or a woman left alone. Her womanhood is not an issue, just a fact. She commands the stage and leads a powerhouse band, wields the guitar like she owns the very sound she makes with it.

In fact she reminds me of Deborah in the Old Testament, a judge over the nation of Israel, who was so righteous in her judging of the tribes, the men would not go out to war without her. This was in the time before Israel had kings and the people relied upon their judges not just to adjudicate situations but to lead them in the paths of righteousness, arbitrating what was meet and fit for them as a people.

And this is how I see Joanna Connor, fearless in her music, no question about it, definite, sure and certain. What she puts down is without doubt, firm and righteous as any music can be, and her band is there, I trust, cause they believe in it just as much. And it is a band impeccable in its power.

Tony Palmer would be an excellent first guitar player in any band. He plays with stinging and powerful lines. He commands the audience’s attention through chorus after chorus, playing straight blues, using the vocabulary of modern blues rock, but never straying into excess.

Stan Mixon is a versatile bass player, popping the strings, rolling through a loping reggae phrase, anchoring the blues power by turns. He and Joanna play off one another while she comps behind Tony’s leads. He pushes the band joyously, pumping with his solid sound.

Bryant T, the drummer, doesn’t need to stand out so much as hold his own amidst the torrent of sound the band puts out. He is tasteful in punctuation while holding the music together in his rhythmic embrace. The band is so sure and certain it doesn’t need a timekeeper. What Bryant does, rather, is serve as an orchestrator from his drum chair.

The egalitarian nature of Joanna Connor’s group is such that Tony plays lead every bit as much as Joanna does. He sets the stage for Joanna’s ‘sturm und drang’. They complement each other without either taking a subservient role. It’s a tribute to Joanna’s prowess that she takes the music up a notch when she follows Tony’s choruses, broadening the sonic landscape with command and passion.

Joanna Connor can play at a level that leaves most guitar players behind. Without histrionics, she wrings a volume of powerful sound out of her instrument that reflects confident self-assurance.

She is not just a slide guitar player, although that is a major component of how she plays. She does not belabor the slide but lets it be the underpinning for all her playing. Some slide players, that’s all you get, nothing but. With Joanna, that’s just a beginning for her overall musical conception. She is in full command of her instrument, creating her own sonic territory.

She has been called ‘ferocious’ and been likened to a soprano Johnny Winter. Fact is she has carved out her own place on the music landscape, primarily based on the controlled passion and intensity that infuses her performance. It’s not something you catch on CD, you got to see it to appreciate the full breadth of her performance. It occurs to me that, if guys like Johnny Winter and Stevie Ray Vaughan were born women, that they might have grown up to be like her, maybe.

During the next set they call up Carolyn Wonderland to sit in on a few songs. She stands up there, all with the "…cutest ‘shucky darn’ East Texas Girl" air, with her hands in the pockets of her brown corduroy overalls. Doesn’t seem like much of a match except that Joanna is beaming at her and Stan is grinning big time.

They do a blues tune and the power of Carolyn’s voice is immediately evident with the thundering band backing her up. I can see why people want to liken Carolyn to Janis Joplin, but that obscures more than it reveals. Carolyn has that impassioned stutter you can hear in Janis, that struggle to get words out in the midst of the torrent of emotion. But Janis sang like James Gurley played guitar, with distortion and overtones, testing the boundaries of their instruments. Carolyn, on the other hand, is a singer of great power and purity, you don’t lose the song, ever. You just get blown away.

Joanna and Carolyn next team up on ‘Chain of Fools’, and it is nailed, by both of them. The music is tough and hard, with Joanna leading the tune on rhythm, but the singing is sublime, Joanna urging the next chorus on Carolyn and Carolyn in turn giving Joanna the lead, content to sing second voice.

You see, this is what it comes down to, really, these two women with disparate musical styles, together on the stage, singing together, each powerful performers in their own right, working their talents in just this one moment that may never come again, could not even be imagined before hand. That is the evanescent splendor of performance, because it lives and then is gone. The crowd goes wild, Carolyn hugs Joanna and leaves the stage, her two hands clasped together, bowing in respect to the spirit in each one before her, namaste.

Joanna and her band continue on into the night, generously giving the house 2 encore numbers. Frankly I am wrung out. I’ve seen Joanna Connor before on the same stage but this time around she has performed with a maturity and command, leading a powerful band through a highly professional set, disciplined yet flexible enough to break out when it makes sense, when it works, when the music is just to strong to be contained.

Both of these women, both of these bands should be very big, they have that level of excellence born of playing before audiences and bringing the fire every night because that’s the way they’ve been made, that’s what is worked into the fibers of their being.

Carolyn and Joanna are here at least once a year. They both have websites, www.carolynwonderland.com and www.joannaconnor.com, so you can track their travels, to plan on seeing them again, although maybe not together. Because, when these people make music, they make a difference.

--El Dormido
dormido@thezone.org