Klondike Sun ~ July 28, 2010
Buffy Sainte-Marie Rocked the Palace Grand
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Photo by Jay Armitage
by Dan Davidson
The lineup went down King Street and along 3rd Avenue the night that Buffy Sainte-Marie came to play at the Palace Grand. Her concert, jointly sponsored by the Dawson City Music Festival and the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, had sold out about three weeks after the tickets went on sale in the winter, and the only people who didn’t make it to the show were those who got stuck in Alaska when parts of the Taylor Highway suddenly washed out.
The opening act for the evening was the duo of Boyd Benjamin and Kevin Barr, both also tapped to perform later in the week at the festival, but pleased and proud to be opening for a First Nations’ icon. They were well received, but it was always clear who was going to be the main event of the evening.
Buffy and her three piece band hit the stage to chants of “We love you Buffy!”
Her opening number, a country-folk tune called “Piney Wood Hills” gave no hint of the wide variety of styles and moods she would present before the evening ended. The set list was about half from her latest cd, Running for the Drum, while the rest came from the length of her entire career, and could mostly be found on such greatest hits collections as her 1996 album Up Where We Belong, which featured songs she said were popular in her concerts.
She was right about that. The audience was treated to “Universal Soldier”, “Up Where We Belong”, “Until it’s Time for You to Go”, and “Cripple Creek”, all either written by her or rearranged from traditional tunes, and each quite different than the one before.
For, as she told the audience, this Cree girl from Saskatchewan who was raised in Maine after her parents died, who attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and earned degrees in teaching and Oriental philosophy, hadn’t really intended to become a performer at all, and kind of slipped into it while she was in college. She’d been planning to go study philosophy in the Far East, but didn’t make it.
Her musical influences are vast, and so her output is far from being just one type of song. On the other hand, just one of her songs, “Until it’s Time for You to Go” has been covered by a range of artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Barbara Streisand, Neil Diamond, Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra, Roberta Flack, Françoise Hardy, Cher, Maureen McGovern, and Bobby Darin. Other songs were hits for Bobby Bare, Chet Atkins, Janis Joplin, Donovan, the Charlatans, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Gram Parsons, Neko Case, the Indigo Girls, Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes and Taj Mahal.
Most of the material she chose from Running with the Drum had a political or social critique edge to it, and the stage versions rock a lot harder and louder than the studio recordings. In fact, this 68 year old woman rocks as hard as any of the younger performers who have played the DCMF over the years.
The driving rhythms of “Starwalker” closed the show, but she came back for an encore with something totally different, the country styled tune “He’s an Indian Cowboy in the Rodeo”.
Singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, pacifist, educator, social activist, and philanthropist, as well as the holder of at least four honourary doctorates in laws, fine arts and letters, you’d have a hard time pinning Buffy Sainte-Marie down to any one category of anything at all.
Download full online edition (pdf – 10 MB): July-28-2010 (394)
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IN THIS ISSUE:
1 – Fred Penner and Buffy Sainte-Marie
2 – Highway Closure, RCMP
3 – Dome Race
4 – Uffish Thoughts
5 – Letters, What to See and Do in Dawson
6 – 7 – Fred & Buffy
8 – 9 – DCMF
10 – Wilf Carter
11 – Fire Centre
12 – Confluence Gallery
13 – Fire Report
14 – 18 – TV Guide pages deleted
19 – 20 years ago
20 – DCMF Volunteers
21 – DCMF Thank you
22 – Prickly Rose, Elfin Saddle, Poetry
23 – Bookends, Peel Land Use Plan
24 – Yukon Gold Mining Alliance, Visitor of the Week
25 – Our Feathered Friends, Cartoons
26 – Summer Housing, Community Garden
27 – Classifieds
28 – Trash to Treasures, Poetry
