San Francisco Blog

Just close your eyes for this long/something’s mixed up and something’s gone/only fingers can you count on, and one leaves two/now you’re broken and you don’t understand/what is Broken falls into place once again.

Seated in rows at either side of the stage and around the balcony, mostly middle-aged couples rubbed the smalls of each others backs as if to say, "aren’t you glad we don’t have to deal with that shit anymore, honey?"

A livelier group gathered on the wood floor in front of the stage to train a closer eye on Merritt and her back-up band of four shaggy men, which had its rewards. If the lyrics were downers, the band’s stage presence – and particularly Merritt’s – was a speedball.

Tossing her long blond mane in all directions, Merritt ruled the stage in a short, v-neck black dress and two-inch, knee-high black boots. Throughout the set – even when the beat slowed up – she swung her shoulders and bucked her petite body like a runaway rocking horse. Sometimes she shook in rhythm with the drums, guitars, and piano; sometimes she swayed to a beat that only seemed to exist in her head. When she picked up the harmonica, when she beat the tambourine, when she slid behind the keyboard, and perhaps even when she left the stage, she did not stop dancing. She even shimmied through “Supposed to Make You Happy,” a slower song about a dead relationship. That she was singing about one of life’s greatest disappointments took a backseat to her passion for the music.

It gradually became clear through the performance that Merritt’s music isn’t really about terribly depressing break-up crap. It’s about sharing her passion, and doing it without holding anything back.

In fact, Merritt seemed disappointed that the audience wasn’t totally on her wavelength. When she thought of San Francisco, she thought of wild, dancing hippies from the Haight-Ashbury.

“Is that gone?” Merritt asked the audience. Nobody answered.

A quiet but spellbound Lisa, who dreams of baking key lime pies and cheesecakes for people to enjoy, had made her way on her own knee-high black boots to the front row. To watch Merritt do the thing she seemed born to do – and to do it with so much feeling – that was inspiring.

Lisa: Open your bakery.