Feist Sees Dead People, Lives to Tell Tale

We wouldn’t have pegged enviably cool Canadian rocker Feist for a ghost-story fan, but she proved us wrong at last night’s Town Hall show. Between songs, she shared an anecdote from a recent gig she played at a 100-year-old theater in Winnipeg, during which she’d had the unmistakable sense that there were ghosts in the room. Nothing particularly ghoulish, though: It was just those fun-loving Marx Brothers, reliving the old days when they used to road-test material at the theater.

Feist went on to explain how she reconciled with her newfound apparitions. “I either had to pour some whiskey … on the ground, or play a song.” At this point, we couldn’t tell if she was losing it or not. She then stepped back from the mic, looked up toward the ceiling, clinched her hands together, and pleaded for support from the Town Hall ghosts. No whiskey-pouring this time around; she went with a lighthearted version of “Now at Last” instead. And in true Vaudevillian fashion, a tap-dancing young girl in a suit and hat joined her onstage. Hokey? Sure. But the crowd went wild. —Michael D. Ayers