From my office to the Tram to South Waterfront’s roads and sidewalks to Waterfront Park to quite possibly the most person-filled bus I’ve ever ridden; getting to S.J. “
Her singing voice seems larger than her body, like her voice draws power from the environment around her. (Hmm. Sooj as Jedi knight? I can almost see that.) Sooj can be quiet and unprepossessing, especially while sitting back to enjoy other people’s live music, but her demonstrative side asserts itself when she stands near a microphone, and then? Watch out.
As a happy surprise bonus, Sooj performed with one of her two compatriots in the band Tricky Pixie. Betsy Tinney, a.k.a.
Some sort of miscommunication led to Sooj and Betsy believing they’d be the sole act at the event (the Luna music series, the last Friday of every month at In Other Words), but three other singer-songwriters turned out to be on the bill. So what they’d intended to be a two-hour set got distilled down to mostly proven crowd-winner-overs, like “Goddess” (“dedicated to everyone who’s had a crush on the cute girl at the coffee shop”), “The Wendy Trilogy” (a three-song cycle imagining: what if Wendy of Peter Pan had become a pirate?) and the Betsy-penned, Sooj-sung delight “Alligator in the House.” (Sooj pointed out the fragment of opera that made it into that song. She likes to make comments and tell stories while performing, extending the instrumental parts to do so.) They also played a newer Betsy song about a randy cat (inspired by one of Betsy’s; “I transcribed it,” she said); for part of the song they asked the audience to, instead of sing along, make cat-mating noises.
I showed up at In Other Words at about 6:45, soon after the event’s start, and hung back so as not to interrupt the first singer. Sooj was perched on a couch closer to the low stage. We finally both saw each other, and hugged, in between others’ songs. She told me she was missing friends of hers who’d been trapped by sickness at home and thus couldn’t attend, but there was my familiar and welcome face at least. And that helped. (The audience’s positive response to Sooj really helped, too, though a couple of people left in the middle of one song. Later Sooj said, deadpan, “I wasn’t lesbian enough for them.”)
I knew we had time after the event for food. I guessed correctly that Sooj, Betsy and Chris (and, of course, myself) could use food. I treated the three of them to pub grub at the McMenamin’s Chapel Pub – the former funeral home where I attended my Grandpa Bob’s memorial 4 ½ years ago – three blocks away. We loaded up the van (“Trunk Tetris!” I said, channeling Sooj’s friend
P.S. Heads-up if you hear a
P.P.S. You watch out for S.J. and make sure she’s fine? Then you’re a Sooj protector!
At last the 2/1 edit: