Seeing Green

Today is not only St. Patrick's Day. Its also the day that the beautiful, rustic Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts annouced their initial summer concert listings. This place ranks up there with my favorite outdoor venues in the country. It's smaller than most of the corporately named, oversized, concrete excuses for venues that litter the country and it pulls in a wide variety of top quality artists.

Some early notable dates for me are:

June
22 Emmylou Harris
25 Ricky Skaggs & Bruce Hornsby

July
15 Al Green
22 Mark Knopfler
28 Crosby, Stills & Nash

August
3 The Black Crowes
10 B.B. King
20 Kenny Rogers & The Oak Ridge Boys

Of all of these shows, I am most interested in seeing the incomparable Reverend Al Green. Rev. Green is obviously no longer a young man, but I have read some reviews which indicate that he sounds just as good as he did 30 years ago. He hardly has any east coast tour dates on the horizon, with only two others listed between now and September. I missed Stevie Wonder on his last round of dates and I hope to not miss the singin' Rev. "Take Me To The River" would just be epic.

View the full Wolf Trap schedule here.

View Al Green's tourdates here.

In the spirit of this week and last being Beatles Weeks on Idol, please take a listen to how a professional singer handles a Lennon/McCartney composition. Take notes Archuletta!

Here is Al Green and his soulful, Memphis horn-soaked take on an early Beatles classic. It just doesn't get any better than this:

Al Green - I Want To Hold Your Hand

Happy St. Patrick's Day to 'ya.