On Saturday, July 10, 2004, I was invited to a concert with some friends.
My gut reaction was "Ack. Concert. Too loud. Too many people", however I was feeling uncharacteristically social, so I decided to ask what sort of concert it was before making my decision.
"It's sort of...Celtic folk music," my friend Jesse informed me.
"Well, that might be all right," I said. So the boyfriend and I ventured out of the house for once.
I'm glad I didn't chicken out of this particular venture into the land of people. The concert was performed by a woman named Heather Alexander -- a very spirited redhead who seemed much younger than her admitted 40 years. She was equally adept at singing, playing the guitar, and shredding the bow of her fiddle. When she appeared on stage (well, it was actually just the front of the Unitarian Universalist church auditorium), my first thought was, "Wow. Cool pants." She acknowledged these pants herself later in the show as her "Hot Topic bondage pants". Her whole outfit was cool: along with the strappy black pants, she wore a shiny black corset topped with a green plaid vest-like thing apparently constructed of neckties.
The seats were placed a bit closer together than I would have liked, but it wasn't unbearable. There were, perhaps, seventy people in attendance -- and it was definitely an eclectic crowd. Quite a few random strangers came up to me and introduced themselves, including a girl who gave her name as "Chaos". All ages were represented: from elfin toddlers to young teenagers wearing kitten ears to the sprightly elderly.
Heather started out by greeting the audience and explaining that this had been a particularly rough trip. She had that half-exhausted / half-wired look of someone who has been dealing with equipment problems and sleep deprivation for several days. Nevertheless, she seemed to perk up after her first song: a ballad about a phoenix I later learned was called "Life's Flame". My immediate impression was, "I like this." It was the sort of music that sent me right back to seventh grade, when I started getting heavily into fantasy and the mythology of the British Isles.
Between songs, it became evident that Heather's charisma score was extremely high, which is certainly appropriate for a bard. She had the audience in hysterics with stories about her Jack Russell terrier going nuts in the car because of all the ground squirrels outside. ("He was just...sitting...staring out the window, and shaking! And his little brain was going 'squirrels!' 'squirrels!' 'squirrels!'")
I got the impression that I was one of very few "newbies" in the audience. Her fan base is extremely devoted. Ms. Alexander commented that she had fans come up to her occasionally and say, "I've been listening to you for my whole life!"
Heather's music gave me the same soaring, longing feeling that I experienced almost perpetually between the ages of eleven and thirteen. The crisp, snow-covered countrysides and stark stone doors of The Dark is Rising (a wonderful book by Susan Cooper), the mingled pastoral revelry and flame-tinged urgency of Tolkien's Middle-Earth. The blast of the kerosene heater as I sat on the basement floor, drawing armor and swords and elves. It always amazes me how sometimes the same feelings can be evoked by music, art, and literature. In all cases my brain goes all silly on me and I start daydreaming about being some kind of warrior maiden.
Don't laugh. You know you've done it, too.
The crowd did get fairly loud, but I didn't mind -- they were not yelling obscenities or exclaiming drunkenly -- they were singing along with the music, stamping their feet, and clapping. I discovered that I don't mind noise so much as long as it makes sense. I found myself clapping along, wishing I knew the lyrics, and thoroughly enjoying myself in spite of feeling somewhat self-conscious.
I was extremely impressed with the diversity of the subject matter covered by Ms. Alexander's lyrics. She sang about everything from leprechauns to dragons to shopping to pirates. Some of the songs seemed entirely appropriate for a children's album, while others dealt with more mature thematic elements such as fidelity, war, and romance versus security.
Heather Alexander's vocal ability is amazingly versatile. She can produce everything from sweet, soft melodious tones to squeaky cartoonishness to angry growls. Whatever style she sings in at a given moment sounds absolutely sincere. Plus, she apparently has incredible lung capacity. During her fiddle-based epic "Faerie Queen" (sort of a Celtic version of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"), I remarked out loud to my friend, "Doesn't she ever need to BREATHE?" (to which my friend replied, "There's nothing but lungs in her corset!") You don't often find a performer who can go from sounding like The Little Mermaid to doing all the voices for a dialogue between a frog and a raccoon to shouting some sort of battle cry without missing a beat.
Perhaps the most notable part of the performance was the March of Cambreadth. I've heard rumors that this song was inspired by part of a roleplaying game, but it has been described by many as "the best battle song ever written". I'd never heard the March of Cambreadth before, but the audience certainly had -- when she played the first few notes on the guitar, there was a deafening chorus of whooping, stomping, and clapping. This is one powerful song. The rousing chorus -- "How many of them can we make die?" borders on disturbingly cathartic. I heard the studio version of this song later on, but absolutely nothing can compare to hearing March of Cambreadth with full audience participation. Normally I prefer listening to a CD in my living room to hearing anything live (because I'm weird), however I think I've found my exception. Apparently, this song managed to draw police attention during a sci-fi convention in 1995, where Heather and her fans in attendance were involved in a contract dispute with the hotel. Legend has it that Ms. Alexander jumped up onto the stone mantelpiece over the lobby fireplace and belting out these lyrics about swords and bashing and generally bringing the bastards down. (Incidentally, the cops left when they realized that nobody was, in fact, being threatened with death.)
I left the show with a new CD and a feeling of exhilaration. As is customary when I discover something new, whether it be an author, artist, or musician, I went to the oracle to do some research.
Heather Alexander was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, and music was an integral part of her life from the time she was born. Her father played guitar and sang jazz, and Heather was taught to read music even before she was taught to read books. Her mother and grandmother were full-blooded Brits, and instilled in young Heather an interest in Shakespeare and mythic tales of the British Isles.
Heather began her (initially reluctant) study of the violin at the age of nine, and later became adept at the guitar, mandolin, and bodhran. She was active in both music and drama while growing up, and learned to perform numerous musical styles -- from opera to country-western. Eventually, though, she found that her truest enjoyment lay in Celtic and folk music. She formed a band called Phoenyx during the 1980s, which she referred to as "Celtic fusion" -- Phoenyx blended traditional folk melodies and instruments with modern electric sound and spirit. Phoenyx produced only a single album -- Keepers of the Flame -- in 1990 (the album is currently out of print and extremely rare). In 1991, Heather decided to embark on a solo career, which she has persisted in ever since (with occassional collaborations and backup bands along the way). Her main following was forged during years of solo performances in coffee shops and at science fiction and fantasy conventions on the West Coast of the United States during the 1990s.
Heather's albums are produced primarily by herself and her husband, Philip Obermarck. The pair currently reside in Oregon, though they spent quite a number of years living in northern California.
Heather Alexander's fan base is largely comprised of, well, geeks. Role-playing gamers, science fiction fans, Ren Faire aficionados, and furries make up a large percentage of her audience. Some of her songs fall into the category of filk -- that is, folk-style music written about or inspired by works of fantasy and science fiction and even role playing games.
Heather Alexander's extensive discography (including collaborations) is available on her official web site http://www.heatherlands.com
References:
http://www.heatherlands.com
A concert review I wrote recently in my LiveJournal
Personal accounts from obsessive fanboys and fangirls
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