We went to a local concert for the first time in forever last night – Loreena McKennit was back at the Merrill Auditorium in Portland. This is our third time seeing her there, and it was another great night.
The tour is officially for the 30th anniversary of The Visit, but she also played some music from her newest album, which came out in 2018. We missed it – but she did mention she hadn’t toured in the US for it, which made some sense. (I do wonder if that was in the works and got scuttled in 2020.)
This was the first show of this tour, which was fun – she talked about the nerves of a first show. She was very chatty – it definitely felt like a catch up with old friends after not seeing each other for a long while. The second half was all about The Visit. I enjoyed Bonnie Portmore and The Lady of Shallot, which I always do, but I was really hoping to hear The Oldways, and I got it! I’ve always loved that song – the imagery of the sea, and the driving fiddle at the end often give me goosebumps.
We had another after concert adventure. As we left, we were joking about our experience leaving the opera we saw in Paris, which was the last concert we went to. We had parked in the parking garage behind the county courthouse – it’s a little further out from City Hall, so isn’t usually quite as crazy. And as we were trying to leave, a line developed at the exit, and didn’t move. Turns out, the machine at the exit would not work. (We had already paid at the kiosk at the stairs, and it wouldn’t even accept prepaid tickets.) So a bunch of people were making phone calls, when a police officer rocked up (the Portland station is on the other side of the garage). He made a few calls as well, and once it was made clear that no one was coming anytime soon to help us, he ended up helping us all escape through the in side (that arm would raise higher). So that was an exciting way to end the night.