Concert Review
Tina Dico
February 3, 2011 @ Schubas
XZo
By Dave Miller
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Chalk one up for second chances.
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I first stumbled upon the music of Tina Dickow a couple summers ago on vacation in Copenhagen, Denmark. My girlfriend and I visited Tivoli Gardens, an old amusement park located right in the city. She happened to be playing that night as part of the park’s summer concert series. We stayed for the show, which packed in an outdoor crowd of about 8,000, many who watched her with rapt attention and sang with the hometown hero. I left more impressed by her following than her music, which was respectable enough but didn’t strike me as much more than that to the point where the set came off as boring and we left about an hour into the performance, slowly weaving our way out from the middle of the masses and headed back to our hotel under the country’s disorienting sky that remained sunny for hours into the night.
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Which brings me to Thursday at Schubas.
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For some reason, I was curious to check out Dickow again. Part of it was the novelty of seeing her of seeing her on my turf in Chicago after seeing her on hers in Copenhagen. But I also had a feeling that the show one would be a good one. I figured it was a chance to see up close and personal what attracts so many people to her music in Denmark, where she once had five albums in the country’s charts at the same time. The extent of her talent was going to be in full display in Schubas intimate music room.
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Darn if she didn’t put on a great show.
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Dickow’s Schubas performance was everything that the Copenhagen one wasn’t. The latter came off as pedestrian pop in a setting that doesn’t do music any favors, but the one last night featured a singer-songwriter baring her soul with beautiful vocals with pristine sound in an intimate setting. Dickow, who goes by the last name of Dico outside Denmark, switched back and forth between an acoustic and electric guitar. She was accompanied by a pair of musicians from Iceland – regular collaborator Helgi Jonsson on keyboards, trombone and backing vocals and drummer Doddi, who joined Dickow for this tour. Together, they gave a lesson on how a pair of musicians cannot just back up a headliner, but make the music subtly soar to a higher level. Their light but colorful touch impeccably added to the songs.
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Dickow opened with a dramatic a cappella start to “In Love,” which she noted afterward would be her one optimistic song of the set. The she light-heartedly announced it was time to her to go down a dark road. Her material is about, in a word, longing. She longs to be in love and longs to be home, so much so, she joked, that she stays out of love and travels, just so she can long some more. “Can you handle it, or is to too strong, all that longing?” she asked. Her comment struck at the heart of how emotional her material can be. At times, it was like watching her as a writer cut herself to let the words bleed out. It was quite fearless to perform such songs so up close and personal. This was no mere pop singer. This was an artist revealing herself.
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About 70 minutes into the performance, the emotional relentlessness of Dickow’s songs started to weigh too heavily, but right at that moment she shifted gears. “Home” closed the main set on a rocking note and saw Dickow, who looks like a Danish Reese Witherspoon, jumping up and down as she played her guitar. The first song in the encore, “No Time to Sleep,” saw the three musicians lined next to each other as the crowd accompanied them with gentle foot stomping on the room’s hardwood floor. Dickow and Johnsson sang as one on the closing “The Road” before Johnsson played his trombone as Dickow stepped to a second microphone and lightly wailed against it.
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It was a tribute to Dickow that 100 or so people turned out to mostly fill the room on a night when most Chicagoans took shelter from the blizzard’s aftermath and sub-zero temperatures. It appeared that half of the crowd was Danish. I felt lucky to be among them.
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The setlist*:
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In Love
Count to Ten
Get to Know You
In the Red
Stains
He Doesn't Know
Walls
Watching Him Go
Room with a View
Glow
One
Sacre Coeur
Friend in a Box
Craftsmanship
Home
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No Time to Sleep
The Road
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*As handwritten on the stage setlist
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Start: 8:59 p.m./Finish: 10:27 p.m.
Totals: 17 songs, one hour 28 minutes
past reviews
Dickow’s Schubas performance was everything that the Copenhagen one wasn’t. The latter came off as pedestrian pop in a setting that doesn’t do music any favors, but the one last night featured a singer-songwriter baring her soul with beautiful vocals with pristine sound in an intimate setting. Dickow, who goes by the last name of Dico outside Denmark, switched back and forth between an acoustic and electric guitar. She was accompanied by a pair of musicians from Iceland – regular collaborator Helgi Jonsson on keyboards, trombone and backing vocals and drummer Doddi, who joined Dickow for this tour. Together, they gave a lesson on how a pair of musicians cannot just back up a headliner, but make the music subtly soar to a higher level. Their light but colorful touch impeccably added to the songs.
About 70 minutes into the performance, the emotional relentlessness of Dickow’s songs started to weigh too heavily, but right at that moment she shifted gears. “Home” closed the main set on a rocking note and saw Dickow, who looks like a Danish Reese Witherspoon, jumping up and down as she played her guitar. The first song in the encore, “No Time to Sleep,” saw the three musicians lined next to each other as the crowd accompanied them with gentle foot stomping on the room’s hardwood floor. Dickow and Johnsson sang as one on the closing “The Road” before Johnsson played his trombone as Dickow stepped to a second microphone and lightly wailed against it.
It was a tribute to Dickow that 100 or so people turned out to mostly fill the room on a night when most Chicagoans took shelter from the blizzard’s aftermath and sub-zero temperatures. It appeared that half of the crowd was Danish. I felt lucky to be among them.
The setlist*: