**1/2 Jo Carol PierceBAD GIRLS UPSET BY THE TRUTH
(Monkey Hill)
"Commit suicide first thing in the morning and you'll feel better all day,"
Pierce
helpfully suggests in this hilarious song-and-monologue stage play
grounded in her
Eisenhower-era
youth in arid Lubbock, Texas -- the place that's
also been the warped inspiration for Terry Allen,
Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, and
Pierce's ex-husband Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor, Jo
Carol rides her "anti-Chrysler" through
stormy relationships with God and
countless boyfriends (all of whom she believes are Jesus). With modest,
amateurish singing she dances an accordion-laced "Borderline Tango" -- but is
it the Tex-Mex border or the thin line between passion and madness? "Does God
have us by the twat or what?", Pierce ponders amid
Rickie Lee Jones-ish
cocktail piano. Who'd have thought suicide could be so funny?
-- Bruce Sylvester
(Jo Carol Pierce plays the Iron Horse in Northampton Tuesday, February
20, with Cathy Fink and Marcie Marxer; and she's at
Johnny D's this Wednesday,
February 21.)
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