Kristen

Wilderness Plots – Saturday, July 26, 2008 – Batavia, IL

July had some very special music moments for me. In addition to seeing Matt & Shannon Heaton in person again for the first time since March of 2007, I was able to attend another concert I had not seen performed live since that same month – the full cast production of Wilderness Plots.

Wilderness Plots is an album of 19 songs written, composed, and performed by five singer/songwriters from south central Indiana – Krista Detor, Tim Grimm, Carrie Newcomer, Tom Roznowski, and Michael White. The songs are based on short stories contained within a book of the same name by author Scott Russell Sanders, who joins the musicians on stage for this production and reads portions of the stories that inspired the songs to introduce most of them throughout the show. With all of the factors involved in putting a show like this together and performing it in front of an audience, not the least of which being coordinating the schedules of the six cast members, the show does not happen often. All of the musicians have their own individual concert performance schedules, and Sanders often tours to promote his literary work and also teaches English at Indiana University in Bloomington. Thus, when I learned the show would be taking place in the western
 Chicago suburb of Batavia, IL on a Saturday night, it seemed the perfect reason for another concert road trip.

Three of us made this journey, and we left shortly after 9:00am on Saturday morning. We were blessed with good driving weather for our travels – partly cloudy, dry, and without a strong wind. It was my first time traveling on toll roads, since Michigan is one of the few states where there aren’t any, and I was pleased when all of the toll stops were clearly marked with plenty of time to get into an appropriate lane. I was also glad most of them had actual attendants to take your money and make change, since we had no idea what to expect in terms of toll costs when we started our journey and would have been hard pressed to have exact change every time. Two of the major roads we had to travel on once we reached Illinois were under major construction, but traffic moved well despite it, so even this did not dampen our trip. With one stop for gas and one for lunch at a Bob Evans shortly before we crossed into Central time, we arrived in the Batavia
 area somewhere around 1:30pm.  

The concert was taking place in Ramsey Auditorium in Wilson Hall on the campus of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, aka Fermilab. We knew nothing of this place beyond the directions we had to locate it, so when we had to pass by it en route to our hotel, we decided to stop and make sure we could find the auditorium and parking for later in the evening. A uniformed guard asked our business there shortly after we turned onto the property, and I was asked to present my driver’s license before we could proceed, but he was very friendly, and we were able to drive on and find the auditorium and our parking options before heading to our hotel. It was my first time attending a concert in a place with that kind of security, so it caught me a bit off guard at first, though everything went very smoothly.

Our hotel was a Days Inn in nearby St. Charles, IL. My Internet directions took us through a residential neighborhood to get us there, and we encountered a spot where S. Tyler Rd. intersected with S. Tyler Rd. and prompted some confusion about which way to go (My theory is that streets of the exact same name should not be allowed to intersect each other at any point.), but we eventually reached our destination and found ourselves just off the main street in town, which proved useful when we wanted to grab a quick dinner before the show. Because we’d gained an hour crossing from Eastern to Central time on our drive in, we had some down time to relax at the hotel before changing clothes and heading to dinner and the show, too, which was nice.

I had my ID ready when we returned to the concert site, but I wasn’t asked for it then, just allowed to proceed when I told the guard (a different person this time) we had come to attend the Wilderness Plots performance. Wilson Hall was clearly a research building of some sort, and Ramsey Auditorium was located at one end of it. The outside of Wilson Hall and the area around it was very architecturally pleasing and created a welcoming atmosphere. The auditorium was slightly smaller in actuality than I had pictured in my head (seating capacity was 847), but it was very beautiful with excellent sound quality, and I imagine it is often used for lectures and the like as part of the research that takes place at Fermilab. We had excellent 5th row center seats purchased sight unseen, and we arrived and took our seats well before the show began.

To talk about the actual show is difficult even though this is supposed to be a concert review, as Wilderness Plots is one of those things that must be seen in person to fully understand its impact and brilliance. It weaves seamlessly from one song and story to the next, and the pictures it paints are strongly vivid and richly detailed. The setting is the settlement of the Ohio Valley during the time between the Revolution and the Civil War, and as audience members experiencing the show unfold, there is a sense you know exactly how it would have felt to live through that place and time, so deeply are the emotions and experiences portrayed.  

This is a show for history and theater lovers as much as it is for music lovers – history for the bits of the past that are intrinsic in the songs and stories, and theater for the engaging interactions between the musicians throughout the show. Each song was written by one performer, but each has multiple performers playing and singing on it, and when someone is not at the front of the stage participating, he or she is seated in the background quietly tapping a foot or a hand along, smiling, and occasionally mouthing words. It is abundantly clear how highly this group of performers thinks of one another and how much they enjoy each other’s music and performing together, as they all look like they are having the most fabulous time on stage throughout the performance, and you can’t help but feel like you’re having a terrific time right along with them as you watch.  

The song Ice Mountains and Hairy Elephants, which features the full cast, is an excellent example of the theater incorporated into the show (and no, I’m not making that title up – if you’re intrigued, go have a listen). The song Aurora Means Dawn, sung by Tim Grimm and Krista Detor portraying a husband and wife beginning new lives, will alternately break your heart and lift it up with its stark truths, and Grimm and Detor take on the essence of these characters so well you find yourself believing they are the characters. The full versions of both of these songs are currently available for listening on the Wilderness Plots MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/wildernessplots, so I encourage folks to go listen for themselves and hear what I’m talking about.

I’ve called the show a miracle in the past, and I truly believe it is in its own way. To be able to combine 6 amazingly talented individuals in story and song and create one cohesive production with elements of music, theater, history, love, worship, death, etc. is special, and I hope anyone out there who gets a chance to see this show in the future takes advantage of it. It has not yet come to Michigan, but I’m hopeful it will in the future, and I look forward to being there when it does.

The crowd was smaller in number than I’d hoped for this night, but what they lacked in number they more than made up for in enthusiasm and involvement. They laughed in many places throughout the show, applauded long and loud at the end and in between songs, and stood in line to purchase books and CDs and chat with the performers afterward. I always love watching artists interact with those who admire their work and seeing how the music that moves me so deeply moves others, too. I hated to leave when the evening was over, but suddenly it was nearing 11pm, and it was time to return to the hotel and get some sleep before the next day’s drive home.  

Sunday’s weather was more of the same, so it was another good day for a drive. Despite losing an hour crossing from Central time back into Eastern time, and even with the usual food stop and gas stop along the way, we made excellent time and were back earlier than I’d expected we’d be. It helped that there wasn’t a lot of traffic in those construction zones on a Sunday morning, I think. If we’d had more time, it might have been fun to park the car at a Metra station and take the train into Chicago at some point, but traveling for only one night didn’t allow that. Perhaps we can go for a longer period of time if we do another show in the area down the road. I haven’t been in downtown Chicago in almost two years now, and I’d love to go back.

That’s all for this edition of my concert adventures. Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone is well!