Last night, Middletown was the recipient of a very special treat in the form of a concert by the ever talented Dar Williams.. As always, Dar delivered intelligent and thought-provoking messages through the angelic beauty of her voice and the simplicity of her guitar playing. She is a natural storyteller and her song introductions came across as if having a conversation with a friend. Dar graduated from Wesleyan in 1989 and it was apparent last night that her experiences there have shaped her songwriting ever since. She had tales to tell about the campus radio station WESU and wove those stories into the introduction of Are You Out There, the song about the deep influence that radio can have on youth. Her lyrics are so emotional and so real and delve so deeply into such painful topics, my friend and I were wondering how she sings her songs without bursting into tears – we certainly did! I thought the biggest tearjerker was “After All”, a song about the struggles of coming into your own self, which last night was introduced also as having developed under the backdrop of Wesleyan.
The audience seemed to be mostly students. One who I spoke to said she had never heard Dar Williams music before. If that student was at all representative of the audience in general, I can hardly imagine the triumph of discovery that this show surely must be for so many who were hearing Dar Williams’s soulful music for the first time. Another person I spoke to was a Dar Williams fan who came from Clinton to see the show. She couldn’t say enough about how impressed she was with the venue and all of the other amazing events, past and upcoming, that were listed in the calendars.
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