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1-5

5 BEING THE BEST

Rated "5" by Pete Pantelis

Vanessa Carlton was the other star of Stevie's Mohegan Sun show on July 1. Just her and a grand piano. This is one very talented young lady. She very confidently hammered out a set that ended with her hit "A Thousand Miles". Stevie has apparently adopted her and took her under her wing. She thanked Stevie more than once for including her in her show.

The show opened with Stevie's band coming out and starting the music for Stand Back. Then Stevie comes on stage from the middle of the stage instead of stage right or left which was a surprise to the audience.

Stevie sounded great - her vocals were spot on the entire night. She pretty much stayed in her usual alto vocal range and rarely ventured out of it. That was one small disappointment of the night. During "Sorcerer" - I kept wanting her to duplicate the beautiful falsetto's from the CD, but she brought the melody lines down to her comfort range.

The venue mix was a little loud for Stevie's music. It was like brick wall loud all night except for Landslide & Dreams. Most of the night we had a hard time hearing the musical subtleties and especially the great background harmonies. One has to assume that Waddy had something to do with the mix during sound check since he is her musical director.

The combination of Drummer Jimmy Paxton and Percussionist Lenny Castro was truly awesome. These guys are unbelievably talented. The other band stand out was Cornell Thigpen on piano. He played a good 5 minute piano solo intro to Rhiannon and another gorgeous intro to Beauty and The Beast. I've thought I'd heard every version of Rhiannon possible and even I as a long time fan had a hard time figuring out what song they were going into! Another awesome talent.

Vanessa Carlton came back out on stage to sing backgrounds on Stevie's encore Zep tune "Rock-n-Roll". Not that you could even pick out the harmonies - it was all mush in the mix. And Carlton also came out at the end of the show for bows.

Here's the set list for this show:

Stand Back
Enchanted
If Anyone Falls
Rhiannon
Dreams
Sorcerer
Gold Dust Woman
I Need To Know
Landslide
Still of the Night
Edge of 17
Rock-n-Roll
Beauty & The Beast

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