How I long to fall just a little bit, to dance out of the lines and stray from the light...

In a nutshell: I love Dar Williams. It is simply that simple.

But here are the details:

Dar’s opener was a band called Girlyman. Now, I admit, while sitting at the bar next door to the Byham gulping down a Bacardi-and-coke, no lime, I toyed with the idea of having another drink and blowing off the opening act. I am glad I didn’t. Girlyman started off with a kick-ass rendition of Paul Simon’s “Never Been Lonely” and got even more interesting from there.

Girlyman is three people – Doris, who has a pure, clear soprano voice that just gets you in your bones; Nate, who is very funny (I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out if he was wearing makeup and I am pretty sure he was. It suited his slightly pudgy yet devilish looks); and Ty, who I immediately became entranced with. I do tend to like those androgynous, small, dark girls: Ty (she’s the one on the right), Sarah Siplak playing a man in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” heck, even the coffeeperson at the local coffee shop, Erin – small, thin, dark, boyish. I suppose if I were to be a lesbian, I’d be the girly one? Funny thing is, I like my men thin and dark, too, but tall. Anyhoo...

Dar opened with her version of “Comfortably Numb.” She did a number of songs from her new album, “My Better Self,” which I bought last night. The song “Beautiful Enemy” is what convinced me to buy it then and there. She sang two of my three favorites – “Mercy of the Fallen” and “Iowa” both of which just ROCKED. Unusually so, as most people are probably familiar with Dar as a folk artist, but she had a full band last night, and both songs just blew me away. She also sang “Alleluia” and “Beauty of the Rain” and “The Babysitter” and a haunting, goosebump-inducing version of “The One Who Knows.”

The crowd was a fairly typical Dar crowd – in other words, lots and lots of lesbians, a smattering of kids. Crunchy folk. And I must say that last night, in one room, was the largest collection of the homeliest people I have ever seen. I am not talking just not gorgeous, or interestingly ugly – I am talking in-your-face plain homeliness. It was astounding for its depth and breadth. Everywhere you turned, there was another. I don’t claim to be a beauty or anything close to it, but wow. Just wow. It was like the Western Pennsylvania Home for Homely People had sponsored a field trip. ("Everybody got their permission slips? Good. Now, everyone got their paper bags? ... oh, damn.")

The Byham is an intimate venue with good acoustics, but there was no dancing. And especially Girlyman required dancing. As usual, it astounded me how out of an entire auditorium of people, I am the only one jiggling and leg-shaking and head-bobbing to the rhythm. Maybe everyone else took their Ritalin before the show.

After the show I skedaddled home to another night of feeding the Terce-monster, and being spit up on more in one night than in the past six weeks combined. Oh, and an incredibly vivid dream involving Thom Yorke, Radiohead on tour, and me.