Every Day is a Winding Road
I went to see Sheryl Crow!!!!
Just wanted to start this by saying, if you subscribed to this newsletter at the Queer Marker’s Market in Portland, Maine this weekend, thank you so much for signing up! Your interest means a lot to me and I hope you enjoy these random little rants I go on, and essays I like to write.
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I was at a work retreat all week, and halfway through I unceremoniously left the team, drove an hour and a half, gave my lizard a handful of worms, and rode my bike to Thompson’s Point in Portland, ME to see Sheryl Crow. I have been hyping this show up to my coworkers all week and fretting about whether or not she would play, “If It Makes you Happy,” and “A Change Would do You Good,” and “Every Day is a Winding Road.” The last show I went to at Thompson’s Point was St. Vincent, last summer, whose too cool for school vibe didn’t sit super well with me. But that night, I was there for something a bit more down to earth.
I haven’t always been an explicit Sheryl Crow fan. I remember walking around Marden’s (a surplus and salvage chain in Maine) as a child, agreeing whole heartedly with “All I Wanna Do.” I would sit in the back seat of my mom’s Audi and yearn along with “Strong Enough.” I owned the soundtrack to the movie Cars, on which “Real Gone,” is the opening track. Sheryl is always playing in the background of my early memories - her and Shania.
My teenage embarrassment about enjoying radio hits has started to wane, and my heart’s opening back up to the soundtrack of my rural childhood. Over the past few months I’ve been shazam-ing familiar tunes, and that’s how I discovered, one after the other, that they were all by Sheryl Crow. That lead me to listening to her by choice, and in doing so I’ve found plenty of queer undertones, Tom Waits homages, and words to live by. It was a no brainer to get tickets to see this show.
Sheryl had the nerve to open her set with “If It Makes You Happy,” leading with the melancholy belting, the capital E empathy. My favorite Sheryl Crow songs all feel like her gently telling her friend to snap out of it. As she worked her way through an impressive lineup of hits (“A Change Would Do You Good,” “My Favorite Mistake,”) my friend Savannah and I wove through the mostly Baby Boomer and Gen X crowd. Sheryl moved effortlessly between instruments, even playing bass on some songs - songs that sound like they would be fun to play on the bass. Sheryl was playful in a professional way. She reminded me of the way people talk about Bonnie Raitt’s performance style.
Something to be said for Sheryl Crow is that she gives he people what they want. Not a single hit single was forgotten or left out. She performed everything I wanted to hear, and I think a lot of other people in the crowd felt that way. I also appreciated that the show wasn’t just dessert. Her attitude seemed to be that if she’s gonna give the people what they want, she’s also gonna give them a piece of her mind. Her stage banter was surprisingly political; she expressed grief over climate change and school shootings, and her more reserved light show erupted into a rainbow during “Soak Up the Sun.”
The last thing I was expecting at a Sheryl Crow show was an explicit moment of trans solidarity, but about six songs into the set, she slung a new guitar over her shoulders and started talking to us about the next song she was going to play. “This song is about a trans person I used to know,” she told us, “Who was so strong.” She told us that her friend got kicked out of the coffee shop where they used to hang out, and that that inspired the song, “It’s Hard to Make a Stand.” I didn’t realize how much more excited I could be about being there, but what she said really helped me feel comfortable and safe there. The stranger next to me told me that she could feel the happiness coming out of every pour of my body.
I have a lot of respect for Sheryl. Going to see her was pretty much the best night ever. God bless her.