An Evening With Dolly Parton

 

“Train, Train”
“The Grass Is Blue”
“Mountain Angel”
“Shine”             
“Little Sparrow”
“Rocky Top”
“Tennessee Mountain Home” (excerpt)
“Coat of Many Colors”                      
“Smoky Mountain Memories”        
“Apple Jack”                      
“He’s Gonna Marry Me”
“Halos & Horns”                                 
“I’m Gone”
“Dagger through the Heart”
“If”                                                      
“9 to 5”                         
“Jolene”                            
Medley: “Islands in the Stream”, “Here You Come Again”,  “Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That”, “Two Doors Down”  “Calm on the Water”
“After the Gold Rush”                             
“Color Me America”
“I Will Always Love You”

"Stairway To Heaven" (as encore)

She is petit and glamorous in the extreme.  She's sexy or ridiculous pending on your viewpoint, is a successful songwriter, and has an amazing and fabulous voice. The strength is awesome, on key, strong and controlled.  I thought she was every bit as good live as anything you hear recorded.  I was mightily impressed that she could sing with such power and consistency without a break for two whole hours (or a sip of water for that matter). She is a faultless vocalist, and it didn't matter that she forgot the odd lyric or two and had to improvise a line here and there during a couple of her more recent songs. During her second song, "The Grass Is Blue", she couldn't quite get where the song was supposed to start, and insisted on re-starting it three time before eventually carrying on regardless. I noticed that she tended to point out where she went wrong after each song which I thought was a strange trait, but one the audience enjoyed.

However, I felt that some people weren't really interested in all of the new things and by the time anything familiar was sung, a lot of them were slightly subdued by so many unknown songs of despair.  In turn, this must really piss-off the performer... The audience politely claps your latest offerings, but goes nuts about stuff you wrote twenty years before.  I really really thoroughly loved seeing Dolly, but can't help but think how different it would have been if she had started with Jolene or something the audience knew.

That said, I have a smug sense of achievement. I am not a Dolly 'nut', but have always admired her and I feel extremely lucky to have seen an icon of mine in the flesh. When she played her last UK concert at the Lyceum (Strand, London) in 1983, I so wanted to see her, but being only a youngster was unable to. I planned on seeing her next time she was in the UK.  Funnily enough I did -- I just never expected it to be twenty years later!

 

Just about everyone who has reviewed the show has said how good it was. Sadly the second night had an abrupt ending when seven women mobbed the singer during her encore and some of Dolly's bodyguards dragged her off the stage whilst the rest ejected the women from the auditorium.

Click the link to see "A Night With Dolly Parton" reviewed by The Telegraph and also The Guardian, or judge for yourself when the BBC screens the concert on January 6th 2003.