Detroit’s Brightest Diamond
My girlfriend, my neighbors, and I all went out last weekend and had one of the most unexpected but wonderful experiences in a long time. Too much awesome happened to write down, but here is a little summary.
I’ve always been a pretty big fan of The Decemberists, but I’ve become especially enamored with their latest effort entitled The Hazards of Love. Shara of My Brightest Diamond fame is one the guest singers on the album, and while I’ve been aware of her for a little while, I really never listened to her music that much before.
Shara’s voice on The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid is one of my favorite parts of the album so I decided to do a little research on Shara which obviously led me to My Brightest Diamond’s website. Once on the site I was pleasently suprised to see that Shara was coming to Detroit very soon to play a free show at The Yes Farm!
Shara with the gang
Needless to say I was pretty excited, but I had no idea where The Yes Farm was located. After a few minutes on Google I found their website. Oooh boy! Looks like we’re about to take a trip back to a ’60s style hippie community!
Once there I found that my suspicions were correct. The Yes Farm is basically an abandoned house that has enough of it’s holes patched up to protect you from the elements. The show was actually a fundraiser so they could install permament electricity. To power the house for this night they had run two extension cords across the lot to the house next door! It was actually kind of scary since it was raining pretty hard and I did see water on the floor around the extension cord. All was fine though, and no one ended up dead.
We were a little unsure as to what to expect, but everyone there was really nice, and once the show started everyone was glued to Shara on stage. Shara put on amazing show and then stayed out to drink beers and hang out with the crowd afterwards. She even signed her setlist for us 
Brandi with her new art
After the show we went to Bert’s in Eastern Market to get something to eat. At this point we were all pretty happy having just experienced something awesome and unique in an area of Detroit that doesn’t have much going for it. The night was just about to get even better though as Thornetta Davis walked into Bert’s halfway through our dinner. I don’t think Thornetta intended to sing, but they called her up on stage after she ordered her dinner. She only sang one song, but man oh man what a song it was. The whole place came alive. Everyone was up clapping and dancing.
Pictures from the night here.
