Review of Show at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, Los Angeles

Todd Everett, Variety, 30 January 1995

Joni Mitchell missed a great opportunity Thursday night when she failed to alter the lyrics of one of her best-known songs to ‘they paved paradise and put up a Western Heritage museum.’ In fact, hits weren’t the order of the day at an informal show in the Griffith Park facility’s Wells Fargo theatre, broadcast throughout the nation as a promotional tool for her most recent album. The show was initiated and promoted by local triple-A station KCSA-FM (101.9), with syndication to approximately a hundred triple-A, AOR and public radio stations coordinated by Warner Bros. in-house. (‘Triple-A’ doesn’t signify a farm team, exactly; the term stands for the Adult Album Alternative programming format).

Turbulent Indigo is the revered singer-songwriter’s first album in three years and the first for Warner Bros.’ Reprise label since 1971. There’s a bit of a Mitchell revival afoot, with current versions of her ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ in release by Amy Grant and Clannad’s Máire Brennan, and of ‘Woodstock’ by Tuck & Patti.

Mitchell didn’t perform either of those or any other of her better-known early songs. Instead she concentrated on her more subtle work, with meandering melodies, literary lyrics and no perceptible hooks.

The theatre’s proscenium stage was dressed to resemble an artist’s workroom, the walls decorated with paintings and a stand-up cutout of Roy Rogers peeping through the window. Mitchell played acoustic guitar, sitting or standing, and proved herself a capable and charming – if nervous – host.

She chatted about her songs, the environ, and her own history as a cowboy-in-training. (Another set decoration was a stand-up cutout of herself, at age eight, dressed in Rogers’ gear. Evidently Gene Autry wasn’t as big in Saskatoon.)

The programme featured songs from the current album, including ‘Sex Kills’, ‘Yvette in English’, ‘The Magdalene Laundries’ and ‘Sunny Sunday’, plus earlier numbers including ‘Cherokee Louise’, the title track from 1976’s Hejira, and a song called ‘Happiness is the Best Facelift’. A slinky version of ‘Moon at the Window’ (from 1982’s Wild Things Run Fast) was a highlight.

The use, by Mitchell the composer, of odd and different tunings for almost every number, forced Mitchell the performer to retune frequently throughout. More conventional tunings or delegating the task might have resulted in a few more songs.