Ingrid Michaelson at the WCL

Last Friday I went to see Ingrid Michaelson at XPN free at noon (for those not from around here, it's a Philly based radio station located in the University area, that organizes free concerts every Friday at noon, among many other things) .

The setlist included, among others, Breakable, The way I am, Keep breathing, Overboard, and a holiday song she said it was the first time she was performing live, and it lasted a little less than an hour.
The place was quite packed, and audience was very mixed in ages, styles, you name it. Pics are taken from the distance, I'm afraid, I could have gotten nearer but I was very cosy in "my" staircase and had a "panoramic" view!!
Ingrid's singing was impeccable, and specially poignant in Keep breathing, which is the song I like best (the lyrics are so spot on on such a difficult theme to write about), as opposed to "The way I am" which has the type of easy tune that tends to get on my nerves after listening to it a few times . On stage with her were 4 more musicians that managed to do a very good job of all songs. The following day was her birthday, and the radio people not only brought her a cake (click to enlargen, see the candles?), they also gave away fake glasses to the audience (not to me, I was five minutes late so...) and at one point the cake came out and everybody sang happy birthday to her wearing those glasses (you can see them on a few people onstage too), which was really cute.


In between songs she'd talk about things and the songs "stories" (like Overboard, which she made notes for during one of those typical lobster boat ride excursions in Maine, where a very handsome-manly fisherman was explaining lobster facts to them and her friend kept saying how cute he was and that she felt like fainting and falling overboard so he would rescue her. Or something like that.). She was fun and charming. Then she had a mini interview and she was asked things like her afterthoughts on lending her song to an Old Navy commercial, how fans had reacted. She gave a pretty good answer, and main reason (apart from $$) was that many more people were going to get to hear her music, and at this point in her career it totally makes sense to me.
She also talked about Grey's anatomy, she pointed out that they're doing a great job of promoting new artists. It really works for both ends, it's got one of the best sountracks around.

And that's about it. Then they raffled a cool white electric guitar that I had no chance of winning (again, since I was late, I didn't enter it, there goes my chance to learn to play guitar!), and I went home in broad day light, which is weird for an after-concert!
You can listen to the concert clicking here (XPN's archives), then in "hear the complete show". There's also the setlist for the show.
PS Feb'08: It made it to youtube, watch Keep breathing here.