A few months ago I got a notice from the Norah Jones fan club about a contest to attend an upcoming "intimate" rehearsal she was having in the Los Angeles area. Of course I submitted my email address, but I also submitted the email address of my co-author, Michael. I meant to tell him I had done so, but forgot about it and one day Michael calls me and says "You'll never guess what I am about to tell you" to which I responded "Did you win Norah Jones tickets???" It didn't take him long to figure out what happened and it was pretty great that Michael chose me to go to the show with him without knowing I was responsible for him winning the tickets. He knows I'm a big Norah Jones fan, so it makes sense, but what if he had told me "Hey, last night my Mom and I saw a free Norah Jones show" - that would have been trouble!

Anyway, we went to the show and were nearly the first ones in line. Ahead of us was a childhood teacher of Norah's and her daughter who is the girlfriend of the drummer for Norah's half-sister Anoushka Shankar. Once we got in we realized just how intimate this show would be. The tiny rehearsal studio probably had around 50 chairs and since we were front row, Norah would be singing within a couple of meters from us. When Norah walked out it was very clear that she remembered her teacher as Norah's face lit up and she gave her the "call me" and hand gesture. The rehearsal was comprised of every song from Norah's new album, "Not Too Late" which comes out today. (We were sworn to secrecy about the album, which is one reason I am only blogging about it now.) I don't think the song order matches the album order, so I can't really give precise first impressions of each song, but I remember that the show started off with some sleepy songs that bordered on boring until she got to the first song that I really loved with I now know is called "Not My Friend" which warmed me up enough to enjoy all the remaining songs she performed. All in all, I'd say this probably will be considered a weaker album than the previous two, but still there will be several must-haves and the whole thing will be listenable straight through.

One thing that was kind of funny though, I don't know if it was our proximity to Norah, or the fact that we were talking a lot in line, but when Norah would ask the audience a question, Michael would basically answer her very specifically in a very clear voice. I thought Norah might be annoyed (maybe some of the audience was) but she actually seemed to appreciate having more of a dialogue. Instead of asking "How you all doing tonight?" and having a response of "rah!" she would here a distinct and well enunciated "Doing great except that we were in line for quite a while but we met a lot of interesting people." Part of me cringed, but I realized that Michael's attitude is the correct one - he's the star of his own world, and plus, he got to talk to Norah Jones!

In any event, you can see us both in the front row on videos from Norah's new Special Edition release of "Not Too Late" which includes a DVD of some of the songs from the rehearsal.