Does PJ always play this (Down by the Water) live?

I know that it's extremely popular and believe that it was her most successful song in the US.

I only ask because I intend on seeing her live in NY this April, and I do this thing where with each term of school I have (which are 10 weeks long) and, after assigning one term an album, I'll listen to one song per week from that album. (I only just recently started listening to her)...it's a fantastic way to make the term go by quick and to really digest her music which is phenomenal beyond definition, really.
and I was intending on listening to To Bring You My Love in my final term, which would leave Down by the Water as one of the final tracks (I've heard it before but never really comprehended it, and from what I remember know I will love it) and I was really looking forward to saving it for those final weeks, ...but if I see her live I feel almost assured she'll play it. In which case I'll hear it, and what I try to do is not listen to ANY of the songs that I have in store, just to make the experience more special.

So I was just wondering what you all think, especially those of you who have been to PJ's concerts before, if she'll play that song...as well as any others she typically seems to play from To Bring You My Love.
Thank you.

PS- all other albums I will have listened to by this time
& PSS- By 20/4 I'll have heard the 1st 3 tracks of the To Bring You My Love, by the way

Welcome angerosa!

I moved your post over here since the On The Run Again forum is mainly for upcoming events.

To answer your question, yes there is a very high probability that she'll play it on this upcoming tour. She's played it on every tour since TBYML. You can see the set lists of most of her shows here:
http://pjharveyshows.thegardenforum.org

If you click the Gigography Quick Reference link at the top it gives you all of them on a single page. You can then use control + F to pop up a search box and enter a word (like "down") to search through the list for all occurances of that word.

We'll know almost for sure after the 1st few shows in February. One thing that has become common for her lately is the exact same songs in the exact same order for many shows. She used to mix things up a bit, but not anymore. Being a perfectionist, she doesn't like to flub her own lyrics.

The recent warmup show in Polly's backyard in December apparently had them doing Meet Ze Monsta for an encore, but they actually finished the show with DBTW.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=777&start=15

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She'll almost certainly play it, but she may play it on the autoharp like she did on the White Chalk tour, in which case it'll sound very little like the original.



And "perfectionist" or not, I think that's pretty lame.

^ It is a bit disappointing.

It does however make the job of comparing bootlegs between different shows quite a bit easier.

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I'm surprised she went this route for the "White Chalk" tour. She really varied the set lists for UHH. So to see such a drastic change within 3 years was pretty surprising- but I guess that's how PJ rolls. Never repeating herself in any way. I imagine the LES tour will use a set list similar to the private show.

For White Chalk, she even had a lyric book in front of her on a music stand for most of it. I attributed that to the likely terror of performing solo (which she had never really done before).

"Never repeating herself in any way"...

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Thank you greatly!

I gather my lack of desire for hearing a song beforehand is a really stupid reason to miss a PJ show, so at least I'll know which ones to perk my ears 'down' for...and sorry for this being in the wrong location, I was hesitant to read the board titles because I noticed they were lyric excerpts and I didn't want to read any song piece I hadn't yet listened to.

Maybe I'm a fanatic but it's all for the sake of truly enjoying her wondrous work.

I do hope that she will play different setlists every night for the future gigs.

I think the White Chalk solo tour was very special, as she had to do everything on stage, maybe she felt less confident. I always thought that she had struggled to do a coherent set of songs she could play by herself and then did not want to change it. Some kind of "recital" tradition (not sure it means something in english).
She did change a few stuff though, opening with Oh my lover or TBYML, sometimes ending with Horses in my dreams, sometimes playing Shame...

As for the AWAMWB tour, they had decided to stick to the PJ&JP songs only so once again it was a "special" tour.

So this year will be the first "regular" tour since 2004. Fingers crossed for the setlists!

BTW was anyone at the Paris show ?
I was in the front with my friend and we kept asking for Heela or City of no Sun. Polly went "ooooh... City of no sun..." and looked at John as if she really wanted to sing it. John hesitated and then said "oh no, we can't remember that one". We laughed and said that OF COURSE they remembered it. Polly smiled to my friend and said "you'll see when you're my age!". And then they went back to the original setlist.
We were SO close to having the first setlist change in this tour !!

It's good that The River came up. Anyway I do agree: unpredictable setlists are the best. I still don't get why she didn't play That Was My Veil in the last tour with John, for example.

Forget Veil. I wanted to hear Heela so badly!

^ I'd be pretty surprised at a Beefheart cover, but anything's possible.

She's done very few covers over the years. AFAIK they are:

1. Wang Dang Doodle (Willie Dixon - Howlin Wolf)
2. Highway 61 Revisted (Bob Dylan)
3. Is That All THere Is? (Leiber/Stoller - Peggy Lee)
4. Shot Of Love (Bob Dylan)
5. Nickel Under The Foot (Blitzstein)
6. Janet, Johnny and James (The Fall)

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Thanks DrDark - I've heard the first three, but don't recognise the latter ones. Interesting.

'Shot of Love'. I couldn't resist!

As far as I know, the only time she has performed it live:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3CIK5SoTio

Edit: Just remembered; 'Moon River' with Vincent Gallo (!) and John Frusciante, I think.

A Rolling Stones, or was it The Beatles song at a London gig? (2004?)

Edit number 2!: The London gig was at The Royal Court Theatre; song was 'Hipshake'; originally by Slim Harpo, but was also covered by the Rolling Stones. Also on youtube!

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Wiggins is so superbly unassuming, he looks like he's about to say 'Pop the gold medal in the post, I'm nipping out for some biscuits'

Mark Steel