Review by Reid Evans
Just got back from a really good show in Augusta, nice little ball park.
I showed up about 7:30, or an hour after the concert was to have begun
and saw Junior Brown's last three songs. I thought he sounded awful as I
was walking into the park, but I warmed up to him (a little) as his set
progressed. His entire band wore suits, which scores points with me.
Then I sat through all of Jimmie Vaughn's set. Ho Hum. The guy's got
chops no doubt, but I just have trouble sitting through that much blues.
I think the rest of the crowd was with me on that one...the telling
moment was when he tried to get the audience to sing the chorus of one
of his songs. Blank stares for the most part.
So he left the stage at about 8:45 and I was waiting for them to set up
the stage. I had gotten there as early as I did to scope out good seats
in the bleachers. I have decided to make a concerted effort not to put
myself in positions where some idiot can piss me off during a show, like
last April in Savannah when captain dickhead and his girlfriend
would....you know what never mind, lets just say, again, I am trying to
avoid situations where some moron can potentially ruin some portion of
the show for me. Getting in the crowd was not conducive to my plan. So I
had gotten pretty good seats in the 1st base bleacher, because I wanted
to face Bob...they were not bad seats at all. So I waited and waited for
that aluminum foiled keyboard to appear on the left of the stage and it
never did.
Upon further examination, I realized that the stage setup has been
altered, really just reversed. Bob is now on the right hand side of the
stage (our right), a little closer to George with Donnie and Stu
flanking him.
So I switched seats and at about 9 pm Bob came out. I'm not gonna go
song for song here. Too tired. Instead here are some highlights and
observations.
1. His voice....it was on the higher end of the realm of variance that
is Dylan's voice. He was singing with much inflection/passion, often
breaking into a sort of choppy recital of lines with little stops in
between words. He seemed to be going all out, not really holding
anything back, and there was not a drop of upsinging until maybe the
10th song. Even there it was fitting.
2 The Band.....is starting to grow on me more and more, I used to think
that anything that was not Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton, was second
rate. I don't think that's true anymore. It's apples and oranges at this
point. I think this band is doing some things that those 1999-2002 bands
could not pull off. I was especially impressed with Denny Freeman, some
of his solo stuff, especially on Cold Irons Bound and Highway 61 was
phenomenal. I also think Bob has found his organ groove after working on
it for a few months.
3 The Venue.....a nice little ballpark. Nothing too fancy. The thing I
noticed first off was that the stage was set up alot closer to the
stands that those in previous ballpark tours. Last year they were deep
in the outfield, this year they were way out in center field, this year
they were set up just past third base.
4.Random thoughts....did you know that we live in a place where it's
against the rules to smoke a cigar OUTSIDE, but it's perfectly okay to
sell someone a beer for six dollars. I think somewhere somebodies
missing it somewhere.
Now to sleep, then to Winston-Salem.
Reid
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