~Greetings Friends! I'm so happy to be home after our little WAY PAST MIDNIGHT tour! We had a great time & all the shows were very well received!~A great big THANK YOU to all of our friends & Music lovers who came out to see us!
~I'm thrilled to share a couple of great reviews with y'all! Scroll down to check them out and see what our Way Past Midnight show is all about, & if you didn't catch us this time, hopefully you will next time!~
Stay tuned for news re: our upcoming Xmas shows, enjoy this lovely Fall weather, 
....& don't forget to VOTE!~
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Way Past Midnight Show Review - World Records - Bakersfield, CA
WHAT a TERRIFIC evening with Maria Muldaur and her most-impressive band! World Records brought Maria for shows in 1999 and 2001.and 2005, so I had an idea of what to expect. But I wasn't even close!
You know, when you hear that a concert is coming, and the artist is in their 80s, the normal first response is, "Mmmm... they're pretty old. I don't know..." But Monday night, well, you can just put Maria Muldaur on the list of octogenarians that have blessed us with incredible unforgettable music experiences at World Records: Petula Clark, Mavis Staples, Elvin Bishop, Maria Muldaur!
I had SO much fun being part of an the audience who gradually completely got it. Maria started off with a story. I thought OK, that's nice. But I still had my regular concert head on. After the first song and understanding how amazing these musicians were individually and as a trio, Maria told another story. Then my regular concert head started to adjust. "Ohhhh... We're not only getting treated to a wonderful concert, we're being led through an opening in the music space-time continuum, not by a book, not by an academic, but by the person who was THERE and a PART of IT!!
Maria Muldaur, (born Maria D'Amato), grew up in famed Greenwich Village, hungry to experience, and DID experience, all the American music masters of the 50s who carried the torch for blues, Appalachian, jazz, and bluegrass. How about that Hoagy Carmichael story?! We sat there listening to a first hand account about one of the greatest American songwriters of all time! Sheeezz!! Maria Muldaur was one of those rarest of souls who understood the richness of music art and artists that were right there, in person, for a time. Think of all the young people like Maria who listened and learned and developed a foundation to head out for their careers: Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Simon & Garfunkel, the Lovin' Spoonful, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt..... It's a HUGE list! (And during the show I had a moment to consider our friend Elvin Bishop was on a similar quest in Chicago.)
And Maria kept going, kept exploring, kept digging back to find and honor the artists who came before, kept collaborating with kindred spirits like Dr. John, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, the Neville Brothers, Charles Brown, Mavis Staples,cJerry Garcia…to name but a few!
I know we all had a wonderful, unexpected, uplifting experience, together. I'm not the same. And I'm not going to forget the journey we shared!~
And the next time I hear, "Oh Maria Muldaur, she's the one who did "Midnight at the Oasis,"" I'm just going to smile and reach back to last Monday night, October 14, 2024.
By the way, my appreciation to all of you that made it to that show on pretty short notice. Maybe that was also part of the appreciation of the Magic!~
Pat - World Records-Bakersfield, CA
Maria Muldaur Brings Way Past Midnight Tour To Phoenix
by Kevin Wierzbicki
Maria Muldaur - October 17, 2024 - Musical Instrument Museum, Phoenix
Maria Muldaur brought her Way Past Midnight tour to the music theater at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix for an evening that celebrated her more than 50-year career and the 50th anniversary of her hit "Midnight at the Oasis," to which the tour name refers. The show was a multi-media event where Maria told stories and gave background about each song before she played them, while photographs pertinent to each song were projected on a large screen behind her. There were some rarely-seen treasures in the photo montages, including shots of her with the likes of Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt and Dr. John.
With the three members of her Red Hot Bluesiana Band already on stage (guitarist Craig Caffall, keys man Eamonn Flynn and drummer Adam Goodhue) Muldaur came out to a warm welcome from the audience and took a seat on a stool center stage. Maria began her storytelling "at the beginning" as she put it, recalling how she was raised in Greenwich Village in New York City, her earliest exposure to music, how she ran away from home and became a "mother's helper" to support herself and how she became involved in the nascent Greenwich Village folk scene where she met Bob Dylan. Dylan, in fact, was the one that encouraged her to perform the Peggy Lee-associated "I'm a Woman," an early number that remains a fan favorite today and was the first song performed during this Way Past Midnight show. Muldaur spoke about how she moved to North Carolina to learn the fiddle before she played the traditional song "Honey Baby Blues," of course playing fiddle on the cut.
The mid-set lineup of songs featured spoken intros about Maria's interactions with Dolly Parton, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Allen Touissant and JJ Cale as she performed "My Tennessee Mountain Home," "The Work Song," "Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues)" and Cale's bit of swamp rock eeriness, "Cajun Moon." One of the most touching moments of all the stories came when Muldaur played Hoagy Carmichael's "Rockin' Chair" where she told how the elderly Carmichael came to the recording session for the song and ended up singing on it. After playing "Louisiana Love Call" which she originally recorded with Aaron Neville, Maria played what she called 'The Big Three' fan favorites: The naughty Blue Lu Barker tune "Don't You Feel My Leg," "It Ain't the Meat" and "Midnight at the Oasis." Muldaur's backing trio played exquisitely throughout the show as Eamonn Flynn played bass electronically while also supplying melody on electric piano, Adam Goodhue kept a steady beat on a small kit and Caffall switched between acoustic and electric guitar, often garnering applause after his solos. One song in particular put a spotlight on Caffall as late in the show Muldaur played Percy Mayfield's "Please Send Me Someone to Love" where he roared with attention-getting bursts of electric guitar while allowing plenty of space for Maria to shine with her vocals. Muldaur had already proven she still has great vocal chops earlier in the show but she put on a veritable clinic as she shrieked, howled and vamped through an acapella portion of the song that was nothing short of jaw-dropping; she even looked a bit stunned herself that she had pulled off the vocal showcase so flawlessly. The show was a rare event that not only delivered stellar music but also loads of charm from the much-beloved artist.
