Steve Earle & Tift Merritt, City Winery, 2/12/14

Tift Merritt - City Winery, 9/23/12

tiff and tift at the mercury lounge

Tiff Randol 3/14/08



Tift Merritt 3/19/08

Tift Merritt, Mercury Lounge, 3/19/08

Tift Merritt at Union Hall 1/11/08

How do you define star quality? It's different for every great performer, but as Friday night at Union Hall proved, when you're barely bigger than your guitar and you can still command the stage like a six-foot-tall Amazon, you can light up the sky like a comet.



You know how at a lot of trendy concerts, there's the group of people in the back of the hall who just stand there talking to each other because they came for the event rather than the music? Not this show, folks. I've seen less reverence at an Easter vigil. This audience wanted to be there, and I think even Ms. Merritt was surprised. Now and then this goofy grin crossed her face, like she was saying to herself, "Wow, this is as good as playing in North Carolina."












"I've never seen anyone attack an acoustic like that," my friend Mark said afterwards, and I had to agree. It's a wonder Tift's still got three joints on her right hand. And she doesn't just stand there and strum away either; she swoops back, raises the guitar like a rifle, and shoots the chords off a telephone pole half a mile away.


She's playing the Mercury Lounge on March 19th. As she said during the show, "Next time you see me I'll have a bunch of boys with me."

I'll be one of 'em.

Weekend Update

Tift Merritt at Union Hall. "This is probably going to be my last acoustic performance for a while," she said. Feel sorry you missed it, music fans.




The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House at Coney Island. "Go ahead. Shoot me in the french fries. Go ahead--do it. Shoot me. Shoot me in the french fries. I dare you. I dare you to shoot me in the french fries. Ah ha! You couldn't hit an elephant at that dist--"



Juno. Can I tell you how refreshing it is to see a Hollywood movie where the women are smarter and more together than the men? Y'know, like in real life? Okay, there are exceptions (y'know, like in real life), but the film nails the Peter Pan male and his inner 19-year-old (y'know, like in my life). Plus the high school slang is used the same way Shakespeare uses blank verse, as a high-intelligence contrast to the plain down-to-earth prose that signals direct emotional engagement without referencing Iggy and the Stooges, Diana Ross, or Thundercats. And I want that hamburger phone.