A Bloody Show- John Wesley Harding and Friends Live at Bumbershoot 2005

Product Description In the long list of to-dos for a veteran musician, a live album, the ubiquitous summer festival appearance, and now the DVD all rank near the top. It makes sense, then, that acclaimed singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding would take these rock-star staples and not only combine them but create something completely new in the process. A Bloody Show captures John Wesley Harding as his best: performing a daring set of previously unreleased material in front of a sold-out crowd at the Bagley Wright Theatre in Seattle. In keeping with the communal spirit of the Bumbershoot festival, Robyn Hitchcock, the Love Hall Tryst, The Minstrel in the Galleries, and Scott McCaughey of the Minus Five join John Wesley Harding on stage to bring Songs of Misfortune to life. The genesis for A Bloody Show actually begins, however, with probably the last item on the rock and roll to-do list: historical fiction. Misfortune, penned by one Wesley Stace (the Bruce Wayne to Harding's Batman), follows the rise, fall, and redemption of orphan Rose Old against the backdrop of Victorian high society. Widely praised, Misfortune would go on to receive nominations for the Guardian First Book Award, the Commonwealth Writer's Prize, and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post and The Boston Phoenix before eventually becoming Songs of Misfortune, a largely a cappella performance of the songs featured in the novel by Harding's Love Hall Tryst project. The final step in the journey from the page to the disc came when the organizers of Bumbershoot approached Harding to bring the projects together in a live performance. Harding rises to the occasion in A Bloody Show. This ambitious project achieves that rare synergy of old and new, mining the theatrical ambition of yesteryear while mixing various forms of storytelling media in a strictly 21st century way. In total, the show spans a captivating 75 minutes and comes bundled with the 14-track bonus album The Tryst Demos, an acoustic album featuring reworked versions of the songs featured in the live performance. A unique record of one of the most exciting concerts of an already accomplished career, A Bloody Show is John Wesley Harding breathing new life into the familiar. Amazon.com Two disparate media make felicitous bedfellows in A Bloody Show, a performance by sing