Liz Phair, with Soccer Mommy, at Turf Club, St Paul (04 June 2018)

Iconic American singer and songwriter Liz Phair returned to the sold-out Turf Club show in St Paul, on Monday, to bring us her “Girly Sound to Guyville” show.



Opening the show was Soccer Mommy, aka Sophie Allison, her third time in the Twin Cities (Cedar Cultural Center (01 Nov 2017) and Bryant Lake Bowl Theater (31 Mar 2018)).


Unfortunately, the noisy bar-like atmosphere of the Turf Club for Allison’s quiet, introspective, tender songs wasn’t a good fit for her, in my opinion.
Still, Allison was excited to be a special guest on this Liz Phair tour, and mentioned that it felt like a dream, “I can’t believe this is happening, I’m crazy super excited to be part of it.”



The first time we saw Soccer Mommy, before her album release, she played a couple of (yet-to-be-titled) songs for us. I’m happy to report one of those songs we called “Down By the River” has an official title of “Clean” … which can be found as the title track of her Fat Possom debut record.



The highlight was a very stripped-down version of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire”. There are many covers of this song, but a slow, almost sad interpretation, of the song is always welcomed.



She ended her set with “Flaw”, which Allison mentioned may be her new single (also available on her Clean album).



Nineties feminist iconic (and potty-mouthed) singer Liz Phair came on stage with guitarist Connor Sullivan. Off stage was her guitarist tech Wyatt, who did a great job pre-tuning and getting Phair’s various guitars ready from song to song.



The “Girly Sound to Guyville” show was a little stripped down for my liking, but Phair promised a full band setup on the upcoming tour (incidentally her forthcoming September show at First Avenue is sold out as well). I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like the guitars-only show, a “jackass” in the audience yelled, “You need a drummer, Liz!”



Liz is used to this kind of heckling, and immediately responded, “You want to get up here?” In some ways, Liz didn’t mind this kind of interaction. When she realized how talky the audience was after the intro song, “F*** or Die” (a song about AIDS), she mentioned, “I never understood those singers that goes shhhh!, the audience is always right!”



Normally, Phair’s set ends with her biggest hit song “Never Said”, and is followed by the encore, but lately, she said was doing away with the fake walking off and returning. Instead, they played straight through to the intended encore. Oddly enough, guitarist Sullivan decided to start jamming, and as a result, they started playing Chip Taylor’s “Wild Thing” (made famous by The Troggs).



After 15 years (at First Avenue in August 2003) since I last saw Phair, it was good to see the “whip-smart” singer again. She still looked and sounded great, and it was fun to hear some of old forgotten songs. I’m glad to see that she’s doing so well, particularly at the upcoming sold-out tour.



Remaining tour dates:

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