Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers

by Nick Offerman

There was a large video screen hanging upstage at Ms. Anderson’s show, and she stood at a keyboard, or set of keyboards, with other doohickeys in evidence, technically speaking. There were three microphones, side by side in a row. I’m writing this from memory, but what I remember is that through her groundbreaking use of technology in performance, she bent and stretched our little midwestern minds before fully blowing them when she picked up her electric violin. The central microphone worked normally, but each of the two side microphones piped Laurie’s voice through a filter, so one sounded like a somewhat truculent, authoritative man (an alter ego who has come to be known in later years as Fenway Bergamot), and the other mike filtered her voice into a harmonizing chorus. The videos on the screen alternated between abstract beauty and short vignettes in which she was playing the man character, complete with moustache, and shot with some sort of fish-eye lens, creating a somewhat dwarfing, fun-house-mirror effect. Her electric violin looked like something out of Tron that might also emit a lightsaber’s blade, and I also recall a bit where the lights went dark and the only light was inside her mouth, intermittently visible through the opening and closing iris of her lips.