Palabras de Geoff Farina
Geoff Farina escribe en su web acerca del concierto con Ainara en el Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid).
Geoff Farina writes about his show with Ainara LeGardon at Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid).
…Speaking of wonderful songs, everyone I met in Spain loves Ainara LeGardon, the musician that I was slated to play with in Madrid. Everywhere I went in Spain, folks said that she wrote inspired songs, played a mean guitar, and was quite a sweatheart, all of which I can now verify. Ainara and I shared beers, Bacalao, and tour stories at a Basque club before returning to the Circulo de Bellas Artes, the gorgeous theater in the center of Madrid where we were to perform. Ainara stepped on the huge stage with only her Fender Coronado and an old German tube PA amp, and proceeded to hypnotize me and 100 other fans for the next 45 minutes. She picked droning, distorted bass lines with her thumb and abstract melodies with her fingers, as her brooding lyrics reverberated through the Baroque hall. Her songs simmered and smoldered like the darkest Robert Pete Williams or John Lee Hooker, building up so much intensity but never quite reaching catharsis. When a song would finally explode it was for only a moment, and it would only hint at the underlying power of her music. I was entranced by the her performance and couldn’t wait to step on stage, and I ended up stomping and strumming as hard as I could and playing one of my best sets of the tour. People seemed to react to everything I played, and the event felt like some otherworldly conversation between the audience and myself. It had been the best show in a long time both for Ainara and for me, and her performance was an inspiration that would propel me through the coming weeks.
After the show we found each other backstage, and both seemed to recognize what we had exchanged: that rare feeling of working on something so weird, specific, and ineffable at home alone for many years, and then finding someone else halfway across the world who was also working on that same weird, specific, ineffable thing. But all we could do was smile and tell each other how inspired we were by each other’s performance. She also talked about some recent health problems that put her music on hold, and she thanked me for giving her the opportunity to get on stage again. She even told me how much she had loved Karate, which made me feel quite proud.
But it wasn’t the first time that I managed to spoil the moment with some social foible: When I asked Ainara if we could trade records, she said, “Didn’t I already give you this when I opened for Karate in Madrid?” Huh? How did I miss that? We had played together before and I couldn’t even remember meeting her! I figured out days later that said meeting had been during the aforementioned Karate tour of Spain, when the rest of the band had poured my ailing bones onto the stage and then into my hotel bed after the show. But I still had to confirm the truth: “I’m an asshole,” I replied. We both laughed and all was forgiven.
