Friday, April 6, 2012
Mad Dog Pub, Gardiner, Maine
**I’m back from a long hiatus! I had SUCH a great time in Eastern Europe with 13 wonderful seniors from Mt. Ararat. We went to Berlin, Prague, Krakow, and Budapest–and had a total blast. I’m back, and have been trying to catch up on sleep and blogging. More to come soon. Just in time for lots more upcoming shows!**
Maybe this is true for people who are not teachers, too, but I struggle with Fridays. I think I could fall asleep for the night even before Dr. Phil comes on. I made it home Friday after school and think I promptly fell asleep. I woke up just in time for a Designing Women marathon on the Preview Channel (you can judge me, but that show is awesome). I perused my Facebook news feed and saw that Anna Pillsbury was playing .25 miles away from my house at my favorite Gardiner pub, Mad Dog.
My friend Leonard (who also designed my What Bree Sees logo—thanks, Leonard!) had emailed me about seeing Anna at Lion’s Pride in Brunswick, and I’d missed her show at Slates in Hallowell. I decided to brush my teeth and head down even though I’d missed the first set. I got to Mad Dog during Anna’s break and got to chat with her—she is super nice and very tall. Turns out, her mom Susan is a regular at Mad Dog’s open mic night that I’ve gone to a number of times on Tuesday nights. Anna has moved home to Maine to pursue music full time, and I wanted to give her a little shout out.
Anna’s music isn’t for everyone because she sings simple, quirky songs about love and loss, but she is very sweet and creative and you should check her out. She is working on writing original material (using the many instruments she plays–including ukelele), but filled in her set with covers of KT Tunstall, Indigo Girls, and Jason Mraz (to name a few). I checked out her YouTube channel, and she has posted hilarious videos of both her own songs and covers of popular songs by Coldplay, Karmin, Train, and other well-known artists. Two of her YouTube videos have gotten over 20,000 hits! Impressive!
I was thoroughly entertained by her song “The Rose,” which is about the show The Bachelor (a former guilty pleasure of mine). It goes, “I saw you standing outside the limo door /And I knew what my life was for/ I’ve seen your face someplace /You’re the man of my dreams /You gave me a hug /Said you were excited to meet me /I fell in love and knew that you were my destiny.”
Anna Pillsbury
I thought seeing Anna was entertaining. She bantered a lot with the small, but attentive crowd. She is very funny and shared a lot of stories about the inspirations for her songs. Some of her songs are kind of racy, but in a comical way. I particularly liked her introduction to one of her songs–she told us she’d written it about trying to date someone who said he was polyamorous. It didn’t go well in the end.
It seems like Anna’s best-known original song is “Kiss Me On A Chair,” certainly inspired by her 6’1” stature. It goes, “And I don’t care how awkward it’ll be /That I’m 6’1″ and you’re maybe 5’3″ /You can kiss me on a chair /You can kiss me in the stairwell /I can get down on my knees /You can kiss me from a tree.” Check Anna out on Facebook. I like that her music is creative, autobiographical, and diverse. She definitely puts on an entertaining and eccentric show.
xo,
bree
whatbreesees 