Paula Cole

Paula Cole / June 4th, 2008 / The Triple Door / Seattle, WA

From my vantage point in the front row of Seattle’s The Triple Door, it was difficult to tell if the crowd’s response to Paula Cole was louder when she first walked onto the stage and opened her concert with “Comin' Down,” from her current album Courage, or if the deafening roar from behind me was greater, as she sang one of her encore songs, “I Don't Want To Wait.” On June 4^th, Paula Cole gave a very special performance, and left her fans with the kind of memories, that are frozen in time.

Throughout her performance as she introduced newer tunes and traveled back in time to resurrect hit songs such as “Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?” it was very apparent that Cole was emotionally impacted by the love and adoration that her fans felt for her. As cries rang out, “Paula we love you,” she sat down at the piano and her left foot began to pound out the beat to the very pretty, “Oh John.”

Paula Cole can play the part of the nasty girl on stage, as she did while singing the in your face, “Amen,” or she can simply rock as she pounds the keys and sings the lyrical lines to “Mississippi,” (This Fire-1996). Her fans hung on the phrases to her often-powerful missives and they made her emotive phrases their own.

These were, for the most part hardcore Paula Cole fans, and they had been waited for this tour, for a long time as Cole had taken a hiatus from the music industry to raise her daughter. Now she is back in the spotlight, a place she earned the right to occupy, many years ago, when she won her Grammy Award for Best New Artist. She owns our hearts and now she once again controls her destiny, only this time with gentler songs such as the beautiful, “Until I Met You,” (Courage—2007), a love ballad that captures that moment, when you find yourself falling in love.

I encountered three very stoked young women on an elevator, shortly after Cole’s concert ended, and one of them, named Christi, adorned in her “Saturn Girl,” tee shirt, perhaps summed it up best when she said this about Paula Cole, “She is so different than most of the artists out there today…her music comes from life.”

That is the essence of Cole’s music, and whether she is singing a hard-hitting tune, or a gentler ballad, that bears the influences of motherhood and maturity, her music is always relevant.

Cole, guitarist Mark Goldenberg and drummer Ben Wittman made it back on stage for the obligatory encore songs, “Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?” and “Jolene,” but she returned for yet another encore, this time, “I Don’t Want To Wait.” If she had not returned to the stage for a second encore, the tables and floor of The Triple Door may have sustained some serious damage from the pounding of hands and stomping of feet.

During “Where Have All The Cowboys Gone,” Cole danced about the stage, she jumped, she played the tambourine and she wore a smile that never left her face. When she returned to the stage the second time, and sat down to play, “I Don’t Want To Wait,” she wiped the tears from her eyes, because she was so overwhelmed by how warmly her fans embraced her. They knew she was back, and Paula Cole knows it too!

Reviewed by Joe Montague

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Reviewed June 4th, 2008

Riveting Riffs wishes to thank the management of The Triple Door for making it possible for Riveting Riffs to review this concert