By Marc D. Allen
The Indianapolis News | April 4, 1997
Two small but potentially terrific shows come to Indianapolis this weekend. Lisa Germano performs her emotionally fragile songs tonight at the Indianapolis Art Center, 820 E. 67th St. On Saturday, the Mighty Blue Kings come to the Patio, 6308 Gullford Ave., to present their take, on big band, swing and blues.
Germano plans to play songs from her four solo albums. The Mighty Blue Kings will do songs from their debut disc, the self-financed Meet Me in Uptown, as well as some as-yet-unreleased material.
Germano’s show begins at 8 p.m. with opening act Melissa Ferrick. Tickets are $15; they’re available through Ticketmaster, (317) 239-5151. Tickets for the Mighty Blue Kings are $5 in ad-vance, $6 at the door. Opening act the Blue Moon Boys take the stage around 10:30 p.m.
For Germano, the concert marks something of a homecoming for three reasons — she lives in Bloomington, she became well known playing violin in John Mellencamp’s band and she’s spent most of the past three months in Los Angeles recording her next record, La.
Though La is mostly finished, Germano says she wanted to do more to promote her 1996 release, the wonderful Excerpts from a Love Circus.
“After putting so much work into (Love Circus), we toured it in Europe for eight weeks,” she says. “It came out here and I was lucky enough to get some really good reviews. But then we didn’t tour here. So 4AD (her record company) was just going to say, ‘Let’s move on to the next record.’ I’m like, ‘No, 1 haven’t finished with this record.'”
They compromised. She’s on a five-week tour and then will complete La —which she describes as “not quite as sad or depressing”—so that it’s ready for release by October.
On this tour, she has teamed with Glenn Hicks of the Bloomington band El Nino.
“It will be very laid-back,” she says. “I don’t even want to have a set list: I want to be carefree and just play whatever. So we just learned a bunch of new stuff. We’ll see how the mood is and just play for an hour and 15 minutes.”
Featured Image: Lisa Germano (Photo: Andrew Catlin)
