Ollabelle

in Jersey City

I brought my daughter to her first concert.  She enjoys Ollabelle's music and really likes the song Elijah Rock.  We arrived at the Newport Tower in jersey City about a half hour before the show began.  She walked up to Fiona and asked if she was going to sing Elijah Rock.  Fiona smiled at her and replied, "I am now."  My daughter was thrilled to hear that.  When they finally did sing it, my daughter swayed and sang all the words.  When they finished, Fiona pointed at her and said, "That one was for Grace."

After the show, my daughter went up to Fiona and thanked her for singing Elijah Rock and then gave her a big hug.

OLLABELLE

at the Stanhope House

Ollabelle harmonized and played wonderfully.  They are a very gifted group who you would like to see have a tremendous amount of success.

I don't profess to know every song they played but I do know that the first set was mainly selections from their recent album Riverside Battle Songs and that their first album (Ollabelle) comprised the majority of the second set.  They also did several songs on their encore to a very enthusiastic crowd.

The following pics are from the evening with Ollabelle.

A photographers note:  Lighting for this shoot was very challenging.  I was about 40 feet or so from the stage and used a 70-300mm lens that has a 1.5X crop factor.  I shot in the Tungsten mode at 3200 ISO.  All these images were shot at shutter speeds of 1/4 to 1/15 of a second with focal lengths between 150 and 300mm - so forgive the blurs at times - some work, some not as much.  Lighting on the guys was particularly rough, so there are fewer shots of them in close up that I could pull off.  Amy and Fiona fell in the best light, though Amy moved a light off here that made it harder to produce solid images.

OLLABELLE is: 

Amy Helm—vocals, mandola
Byron Isaacs—vocals, bass, dobro
Tony Leone—vocals, drums, percussion
Fiona McBain—vocals, acoustic and electric guitars
Glenn Patscha—vocals, keyboards, accordion