Teen Fiddle Phenom Amanda Shaw Shows NY How It's Done

They didn't do their version of "Should I Stay Or Should I Go?" (from an album that Amanda self-released when she was 13) at B.B.'s, but they did do "The South's Gonna Do It Again" by Charlie Daniels-- somewhat incongruously, since NYC isn't exactly rebel country (plus she changed one self-referential lyric from "CDB" to "the CGs"), but CDB songs means fiddle solos, and that particular jam has always a good one for showing off swing chops, thanks to its Glen Miller break in the middle.

The set -- like Amanda's new Rounder Pretty Runs Out, one of 2008's best albums -- also featured Led Zeppelin-rhythmed rock ("Easy On Your Way Out"), heavy fuming funk ("Woulda Coulda Shoulda," which Amanda explained to me was inspired by a boy who didn't thank her for a fragrant candle she gave him as a gift which he clearly needed since "boys are smelly"), countrified new wave sung in a gravely Rachel Sweet twang ("Pretty Runs Out," which warns "you can bet your Botox that beauty fades"), Latin-tinged gumbo praising Mexican immigrant construction workers ("Chirmolito"), a Dianne Warren-penned country-pop ballad that Taylor Swift fans might like ("I Don't Want to Be Your Friend"), a few of the French-sounding cajun reels that are Amanda's specialty (though she says she actually prefers dancing to zydeco herself because it's funkier), and a magnificent virtuoso fiddle finale in case anybody wondered whether Amanda had been classically trained since she was four years old. (She was, though her teachers back then called it a violin.)

What the set demonstrated, and what might just make Amanda Shaw unique on the planet right now, is that her music conceivably has the potential to appeal to both Foghat devotees in their 50s and their 12-year-old daughters who prefer Miley Cyrus (just for starters -- Juvenile's people have checked out her gigs too, she told me). Amanda actually has a background in Disney Channel movies (and also co-narrated a 2006 documentary about Katrina called Hurricane On The Bayou), and from her go-go shimmy moves to the slinky shiny silver number she was wearing on stage, she radiates a bubbly teen-pop presence that doesn't get stodged down by the supposedly "traditional" nature of much of her music. She told me she wants "to be like Tift Merritt when I grow up" (she likes Amy Winehouse, too), but she's also a major fan of ice cream. It's not hard at all to imagine little girls looking up to her as a really cool role model. In New Orleans, I'm told, they already do.