Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter - Kate Wolf Memorial Festival, Black Oak Ranch, Laytonville, CA, 6-29-2003

For a long time, I'd had this bootleg concert sitting in my huge pile of albums I want to listen to. Then yesterday, I posted a concert of the Allman Brothers Band playing with Eric Clapton for well over an hour, and that got me to remember this, as another rare example of two headliners playing a full concert with each other. Boy, am I glad I found this. If you're a fan of Shawn Colvin and/or Mary Chapin Carpenter at all, you need this. The sound quality is amazing and the performance is great.

There seems to be a kind of loose association of female singer-songwriters from a certain era. For instance, Colin, Carpenter, and Rosanne Cash harmonized together on a song for a Bob Dylan tribute concert in 1992. But it's rare to have a genuine collaboration that lasts for a whole concert like this one. You'd think the two of them were long time musical partners, with the way they play and sing harmonies together on all but a few of the songs here. 

But what I particularly like is how you can tell that they were having a ball, especially with all their joking. For instance, there was a running joke about one of them smoking crack backstage, and another running joke about the low voice of John Gorka (who apparently was the opening act). Near the end, of them even danced with a hula hoop while the riff of Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" was played on guitar! Too bad we can only hear that and imagine, instead of getting to see it.

Listening to this, I got the sense that the two of them are good friends. I was pleased to see that they've occasionally played concerts together since this one. For instance, they did a tour in 2019 with both of them and Marc Cohn on stage for all of the concerts.

I also have the feeling that the set list was quite different than what they usually played in their solo concerts at the time. There was an emphasis on cover songs, including Donovan (two, actually), the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Simon and Garfunkel, the Flying Burrito Bros, John Gorka, and even the Backstreet Boys! Another female singer-songwriter, Tracy Grammer, also briefly joined them on stage to sing one of her songs, "Gentle Soldier of My Soul."

The concert is in acoustic format, but the were assisted by a lead guitarist. And damn, the sound quality is impressive, especially for a bootleg. One could practically hear a pin drop at times. I searched the Internet for mentions of this concert before posting it today, and I could find almost nothing. So I'm really glad that I saved it when I did, which probably was a bunch of years ago.

This album is two hours and three minutes long.

01 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 Catch the Wind (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 Someday (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 One Cool Remove (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 Dancing in the Dark (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Shotgun Down the Avalanche (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 Keeping the Faith (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 Wichita Skyline (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 A Matter of Minutes (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 Good Night America (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
17 Grand Central Station (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
18 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
19 Gentle Soldier of My Soul (Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter & Tracy Grammer)
20 Colours (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
21 Even Here We Are (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
22 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
23 This Shirt (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
24 I'll Be Back (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
25 That's the Way Love Goes (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
26 Safe at Harbour (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
27 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
28 I Want It That Way (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
29 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
30 The Only Living Boy in New York (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
31 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
32 Smoke on the Water (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
33 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
34 Sin City (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
35 Quittin' Time (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://www.imagenetz.de/ceytp

I believe the photo is from this exact concert. I edited it in Photoshop to bring the two of them closer together.