Something Blue: Reimagining Joni Mitchell's Blue Album

SOMETHING BLUE
Reimagining Joni Mitchell's Blue Album
Alanna & Old Hat

Friday 13 November, 7.30pm

The ‘Something Blue’ show reimagines Joni Mitchell’s Blue (1971) album in vintage jazz style. The fourth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell is a collection of songs that all deal with loss and transformation and has long been considered her magnum opus and her most personal album. Alanna & Old Hat are a Swing quintet that brings to life the golden era of classic jazz from the 1920’s – 40’s. The band features Alanna Egan on lead vocals.

‘I envy Alanna’s patter – never seen such an incisive wit wrapped around an incredible talent. Review by singer Enda Kenny.

Joni Mitchell herself said of 'Blue - “there's hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period in my life, I had no personal defences. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn't pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defences there either." Joni Mitchell in conversation with Cameron Crowe for the Los Angeles Times

Alanna & Old Hat

Alanna Egan, Lead vocal
Steve Grant, Piano
Jen Hawley, Guitar / back up vocals
Hope Csutoros, Violin / back up vocals
Tim Nikolsy, Double bass

JONI MITCHELL BLUE

100 Best Albums of all time. 
For most, a greasy skillet is a nuisance in the kitchen sink, an upcoming chore. But for Joni Mitchell, it’s a ripe romantic metaphor in waiting. In “My Old Man”, the second track on her fourth album, 1971’s Blue, the singer-songwriter plays the piano while singing a sunny ode to the life she shared with a “singer in the park” and “dancer in the dark” who keeps her blues at bay. She boasts of their bond, as strong as a marriage without the formality of it (“We don’t need no piece of paper from the city hall”), and pays him one of the highest compliments a musician can bestow (“He’s the warmest chord I ever heard”). But the bridge of “My Old Man” offers a chilly, atonal changeup in the midst of Mitchell’s warm affection that bubbles up from a deeper, darker place than the pleasantries>

Blue took shape in a moment of personal transition for Mitchell, right after the end of her relationship with Nash and just as she was falling for Taylor: She wrote her way out of an old love and into a new one, all while infusing her lyrics with the nostalgia, pain, joy, excitement and appreciation for all that bubbled to the surface in that period. And while Blue offers a glimpse into the recesses of Mitchell’s heart at the time, it explores all love and loss, not just of the romantic sort (“Little Green” is an ode to the daughter she gave up for adoption, which she wouldn’t reveal until the ’90s). Long hailed as her magnum opus, Blue is as much a testament to her talent as it is the readiness with which she’s willing to share her most intimate truths. The Cover Photograph: Taken by Tim Considine at the Troubadour in Los Angeles in 1968. 

See also:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_%28Joni_Mitchell_album%29 

Some interesting facts about Blue :

1. Joni bought an Appalachian dulcimer at a Big Sur craft fair in 1969, which became the core instrument behind the album's sound.

2.  She wrote "California", "A Case of You", and "All I Want" on that dulcimer while traveling across Europe by train and boat.

3. Having never played the instrument before, she constantly invented her own unique chord tunings.

4.  She completely banned visitors from the control room during recording at A&M Studios because she felt so emotionally raw.

5.  James Taylor played guitar on "California" and "All I Want" during their brief romance, which had ended by the time the album debuted in June 1971. [1]