Face the Music: Portland musician Sara Hallie Richardson takes on iconic Joni Mitchell album
Richardson will be performing Blue in front of a small audience Feb. 19 at The Halo at Thompson s Point.
Photo by Aimsel Ponti
Joni Mitchell’s 1971 “Blue” album is on my top 10 list of all-time favorite albums, and musician Sara Hallie Richardson will be playing every song from it on Feb. 19 in Portland.
“Blue,” Mitchell’s fourth album, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and was released when the artist was 27.
I’ve been essentially obsessed with the album for decades, and it never ceases to amaze me how it encapsulates such a deep sense of love, longing and place. From the opening “All I Want” to the closing “The Last Time I Saw Richard,” the journey Mitchell offers is profound, and as a fan of Richardson for nearly a decade, I have unfettered faith that she’ll take the audience on a similar journey, while also putting her own mark on it.
Press Play: Listen to ‘Self Help!’ by Spose & The Humans
The single is the first studio recording released by the all-star band.
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Rapper Spose has been performing and collaborating with musicians Dave Gutter (guitar, vocals) and Jon Roods (bass, synth, keys) from Rustic Overtones, along with Kyle Gervais (guitar, vocals) and Derek Gierhan (drums), as Spose & The Humans, since the summer of 2018.
They’ve done two tours as a band, in November 2018 and during the summer of 2019, and they released a “Live in Denver” album.
In January of last year, they went into the Halo recording studio in Portland to start recording an album but had to put the brakes on when COVID-19 hit. They were able to reconvene in the Mallett Brothers recording space in October to record “Self Help!” along with another track with Jon Wyman as mixer.