Is Chan Marshall (Aka Cat Power) doing better live shows these days?

March 22, 2021 10:57 AM

She's playing on Friday 8/20 in Lexington, KY. On Sat 8/21 I'm in Columbus, OH for work, and I'm thinking about flying to Lexington on Friday to catch the show, staying over, then doing the 3-hour drive to Columbus Sat morning. I saw her open for the Cowboy Junkies in the late 1990s, and Uncle Tupelo in the early 2000s, and she didn't impress either time. Lackluster live shows were fairly common for her at the time, but that was long ago. Has anyone seen her more recently?
posted by BadgerDoctor to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

Are you aware that the 8/20 date is a set at the Railbird Festival. I have not seen any official notices about the lineup or ticket sales yet. Time will tell if festivals are held this year.
posted by tman99 at 11:08 AM on March 22, 2021

Yeah I am
posted by BadgerDoctor at 11:10 AM on March 22, 2021

I have seen her in the 90s, the early 00s, and more recently 2019 and I thought the 2019 show was head and shoulders above the previous ones, fwiw.
posted by *s at 11:13 AM on March 22, 2021

I saw her in 2019 and was absolutely blown away. She was in great voice, and fully engaged in the show and with the crowd. A+++ would see again.
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:18 AM on March 22, 2021

Not only pertinent to Cat, but because I am a stickler for live show quality of a certain level, pre-covid I would often hunt for youtube snippets of current live tours. Even if the captures are not necessarily high quality, I can usually get a sense of whether I would buy a ticket for that tour or not. Even better is if I can see grabs of multiple dates, in case they were just having an off day. : )
posted by bitterkitten at 11:42 AM on March 22, 2021

She’s talked about having been very intoxicated for most of her shows around then, when she was deep in the throes of alcoholism and struggling with untreated mental health issues She’s gone through a LOT since but is sober now I think. I would LOVE to see her as soon as that’s a thing again.
posted by namemeansgazelle at 4:09 PM on March 22, 2021

Wow. This is good news. Saw her live 3 times and she's the the top 3 of my top 10 of worst live shows. All were 90s/00s, though. Lovely to see she's turned things around.
posted by dobbs at 4:18 PM on March 22, 2021

Cat Power holds a place in my bottom 5 shows (2000) and my top 5 shows (2018). I would absolutely love to see her again and would totally travel to do so if safe.
posted by Lapin at 7:10 PM on March 22, 2021