This evening, Dar Williams did a free mini-show at Easy Street Records on Queen Anne. It’s a bummer that she didn’t play a full show this time around. Seeing a few songs is better than seeing none, but a full-length Dar show is a thing of beauty.

She played a few songs from her new album, "The Beauty of the Rain" ("Farewell to the Old Me," "Fishing in the Morning," "I Saw a Bird Fly Away" and "The One Who Knows") and one of her older ones ("Christians and the Pagans"). Then she came out and did "February" as an encore. It as a very nice set.

There were a lot of people there. Quite a few more than I’d expected. I’d estimate the turnout at about 200, but I’m notoriously inept at judging crowd size. Sadly, due to the layout of the space (merchandise racks everywhere) and the number of people who got there before us, we didn’t get to be very close. That, coupled with lighting too low for available light shooting and the anemic flash on my digital camera, means that I didn’t get any usable pictures of Dar at all. I could have brought a film camera with fast film or an external flash, but I didn’t really feel like lugging that stuff around. And I was expecting to be a lot closer. I learned my lesson about getting to a free Dar appearance late. I’ve been to enough Dar shows that I really should have known better.