Oh, yah. Her too.
We saw her live this past summer in Bethlehem, NH (a small and pleasant little theatre; a favorite venue of ours that used to be a dirty movie theater, apparently) on a very warm, early-summer evening. Just "Miss Merchant" and a guitarist. She was
great, and much less aloof and restrained than I was expecting. She was a complete, unalloyed joy -- and she ended the evening with
Kind and Generous, with the last words (
thank you, thank you...) belonging to the audience (
a la the Dead and
Not Fade Away).
Two other thoughts
1) you can have your Junkies and your Natalie Merchant, too!
2) IF you've never seen the Jennys live, I highly recommend them. Every time we've seen 'em (which is quite a few, at this point), they end their show by singing
The Parting Glass really, truly acapella -- they step away from the mics to the front of the stage and just sing to the audience. Just lung power... and it's always spine-tingling.
(that's the studio recording)