The ‘Spirit of Patsy Cline Show’ – Standing in her dream

The Spirit of Patsy Cline Show, starring Christina Hutt and Sean Cotton with his legendary local band, continued its successful summerlong tour, delighting a capacity audience at the Rene Caisse Theatre in Bracebridge on Saturday, September 21, 2024.

The theatre was the perfect setting for Hutt and company’s enthralling journey through the intensely emotional classic tracks that the celebrated songstress left to posterity. The packed auditorium ecstatically appreciated Christina’s haunting interpretations of songs that have grown ever more popular and loved in the sixty-plus years since an untimely accident took Patsy Cline’s life in 1963 at the age of thirty. 

In her relatively short career, Patsy Cline managed to transform the Country and Western music genre she entered in 1954 into a crossover pop sensation that seemed limitless in appeal, admiration, and staggering potential. With a string of top-ten charted hits, Cline had endeared her musical talents to millions of listeners and was poised to achieve even greater success and celebrity. 

Cline was the embodiment of class, with her colourful array of gowns and cosmetics; grace, with her warm friendships with fans and fellow musicians Dottie West and Loretta Lynn, and her lioness independence and swagger. Though her song choices were often blue and mournful, she stood tall in her own resolve to carry on and persevere and, indeed, overcome adversity. Cline wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of her achieving her goals. With her eloquent vocal delivery, Cline found a magical combination of sass and sorrow that seeps into the “cracks and crevices” that make up and enlighten the human soul.  

Years later, Christina Hutt found her path to her self-realized redemption with her song “Cracks & Crevices,” released on January 7, 2020.  But it was her song, ‘Fifteen Shades’ released in June of 2020, that truly cemented her deep connection with the aura and enduring spirt of Ms. Patsy Cline. 

Christina has known since she was five years of age that she was destined to be a singer. She and her mother and grandmother would sing the timeless songs of Patsy together, dreaming that one day, she, like her idol Cline, would dress in fine clothes and belt out a melody with heart and soul. 

During her show at Rene Caisse Theatre, Hutt told the audience that she was “standing in her dream,” performing these cherished songs before an admiring audience. What a ‘Sweet Dream’ it is. 

Surrounded by musicians capable of every twist and turn that Cline’s musical accompaniment personified- sultry, jazzy, silky, ornate, Hutt poured her heart out throughout the two-hour concert, immersing herself into the intense heartache and lyrical nuance that these songs reflect. Her innate empathy with, and deep understanding of the backdrop of this material is formidable. 

Hutt possesses a stronger, more developed voice than Cline, reaching deep into the rich country-blues dirt that these songs were born and nurtured in. But this is exactly what makes this show so riveting and exhilarating. Hutt, like the best blues-gospel singers, is extolling, summoning, exalting the spirit to emerge and shake the floor boards up to the rafters. And in so doing, release the shackles that bind mere mortals to this earthy realm. To uplift others with song is clearly the sincere chosen wish that Christina Hutt strives for in her every performance. 

Why Can’t He be You – performed by Christina Hutt (written by Hank Cochran)

https://www.facebook.com/794812707/videos/1442223429783886

The show, divided into two parts, with four gorgeous costume changes, designed specifically by Barbara Hartwick for Hutt and this show. Hutt and her band progressed effortlessly through the decade of Cline’s ascendence into stardom. Classics like ‘Crazy’, ‘Sweet Dreams’, ‘I Fall to Pieces’, peppered the two sets. Surprisingly, lesser-known songs garnered the longest applause.  ‘She’s Got You’, had an audience member shouting out that it was her favourite song.  With Cotton and bassist, Michael Philips filling in the role of Cline’s (and Elvis Presley’s) back-up singers, the Jordinaires, Christina acutely connected her singing with the deep fire and resonance that Cline was so skilled at. 

Christina Hutt, who also tours with a variety of bands showcasing her own compositions and favourite cover songs, has been working relentlessly this past year, (after several years of early performances), to bring her unique musical voice to a broader audience throughout Muskoka and Toronto. Powerful, throaty and genuinely emotional, Hutt has perfected virtually operatic qualities in her singing – sustained control, phrasing, natural emphatic vibrato and quavering, all of which directly affect the listener’s heartstrings. She brought everyone to their feet with her version of, ‘So Wrong,’ written by the great Mel Tillis & Carl Perkins, her voice breaking with feeling, “I was so wrong, for so long, but I’ve seen the light, darlin’, I’ll make it right, I was wrong.”       

Despite being a tribute to the lasting influence of Patsy Cline, it was Hutt’s own, ‘Fifteen Shades,’ that had the audience clamouring for more with two standing ovations to end the night. The spirit was shimmering brightly across the stage when Christina took her final bow.

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