John Hammond at the Dakota: Concert Review

John Hammond

When: Sunday, February 28, 2010 • Where: Dakota • Who: John Hammond

For a veteran bluesman, John Hammond doesn’t seem very blue. In fact, he seems genuinely happy, and nice besides. Someone you’d like to hang out with, have a drink with, invite to dinner, maybe even marry and stay married to; his second wife, Marla, has been with him since 1983, serves as co-producer on his records, and travels with him.

Following last night’s one-night, sold-out stand at the Dakota, people lined up to meet them. Marla handled the CD sales biz, taking money and stripping off shrinkwrap. John reached out his hand, smiled warmly, asked “What’s your name?” and made time to chat. I wanted to bring them both home for nightcaps and leftovers.


Paul Metsa

Local bluesmen Paul Metsa and Sonny Earl opened; it was Metsa’s first time on the Dakota stage, and he was glad to be there. He sang and played “Whistling Past the Graveyard,” then Earl came out wearing his harmonica—belt? Holster? Bandolier? Whatever, it was cool. Tunes like “I’m a White Boy Lost in the Blues” and Charlie Musselwhite’s “River Hip Mama” put us in the mood. Earl is a smoother singer than Metsa, whose voice has been called, perhaps too kindly, “whiskey-tinged.”


Sonny Earl

Then Hammond came on stage alone and announced, “I’ve got a whole bunch of songs and I’m just going to play what I feel like.” (Later in the evening, when someone called out a request, he deflected it by saying that David Bromberg once told a crowd, “This is not Burger King. You do not get it your way.”)

You do get a lot of music at a John Hammond show, from famous blues songs to tunes that were lost until he found them again, from classics to originals. (Scroll down for the playlist I scribbled during the show; I think I caught almost everything.) It’s a history lesson and a head-smacking reminder of how rich and varied this genre is, and how expressive of human emotions: bad-ass and bitter, tender and sweet, playful, rueful, hopeful, anguished, desperate, foolish, wise.

Hammond is a one-man band: a voice made to sing the blues, guitar (he had two on stage at the Dakota, wood and steel, and he switched between them), harmonica on a rack around his neck (he’d snap one out and another in), foot on the floor like a Taiko drum. (He stomped so hard the floor actually shook.) His vowels (“who’s,” “blues”) go high and lonesome, like one of those wooden train whistles.

You also get a lot of stories at a John Hammond show, stories that start in childhood (spent listening to the blues on a Nashville radio station) and move slowly through time. He drops as many names as notes but there is no arrogance about him. Some people will say they know so-and-so, or went to the Grammys, or met a movie star and your eyes will roll. Hammond mentioned dozens of blues legends during his set—people he knew and had played with—but he talked about them like a star-struck kid.


John Hammond

His latest CD, Rough & Tough (Chesky, 2009), was a Grammy nominee this year (“It didn’t win, but my wife still thinks I'm a star”). Hammond told us that his publisher, Bug Music, hosted a big party at Wolfgang Puck during which Jeff Bridges came up to him and said, “I love Wicked Grin.” He wasn’t boasting, just sharing This Incredibly Cool Thing That Happened.

He made us laugh by describing blues legend Big Joe Williams as being “about five-foot-nine by five-foot nine.” He mentioned the Crown Vic he had in his early days but didn’t, alas, sing “Slick Crown Vic,” one of my favorite Hammond tunes. Nor did he sing the Stones’ B-side “Spider and the Fly,” a song I especially love in his version. Maybe next time.

As he’s done before (this is the third time I’ve seen him, the first two at the Cedar), he reached out to the crowd, letting us know he knew where he was, that Minneapolis was not just another nameless stop. “It’s our last night of a two-week tour, all the way through the upper Midwest, and it’s balmy here.” (A little joke for Minnesotans.) “We’re so happy to play this beautiful club.” “I started my professional career in 1962 in New York City, where I met Koerner, Ray and Glover”—local music heroes Spider John Koerner, Dave Ray, and Tony Glover.

Near the end of his generous set, nearly two hours, he said, “Thank you for coming. I feel like somebody.”

Afterward I spoke with a person who had worked with Hammond before. “Is he really that nice?” I asked. The answer: “Oh, definitely.”

Playlist

“Just Your Fool” (Little Walter)
“Heartache Blues” (John Hammond)
“Mean Old Lonesome Train” (Lightnin Slim)
“My Time After While” (Buddy Guy/Robert Geddins)
“Rockin’ Oldsmobile” (?)
“Come On in My Kitchen” (Robert Johnson)
“You Know That’s Cold” (John Hammond)
“Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues” (Skip James)
“Come to Find Out” (John Hammond)
“Someday Blues” (Sleepy John Estes)
“Fattening Frogs for Snakes” (Sonny Boy Williamson)
“That’s Alright (Who’s Loving You Tonight?)” (Jimmy Rodgers)
“Drop Down Mama” (Big Joe Williams)
“Love Changing Blues” (Blind Willie McTell)
“No One Can Forgive Me but My Baby” (Tom Waits, written for Hammond)
“Found Love” (Jimmy Reed)
[Something with the lines “I love you baby like a bulldog loves a hound/You’ve got just what it takes to make a preacher lay his Bible down”]
“Fannin Street” (John Hammond)

Photos by John Whiting

Eric Bibb at the Dakota: Blues of hope and loving kindness

When: Wednesday, May 6, 2009 • Where: Dakota • Who: Eric Bibb

When bluesman Eric Bibb came to town last year, I went to see him because a friend wanted to go. I still think about that performance and how wonderful it was. Tonight is wonderful, too, but in different ways. Last year had the element of surprise. This year Bibb seems more at home in the room, more relaxed and easy. Happier.

Hope, loving kindness, happy—words not usually associated with the blues. Yet except for the opening song, “Stagolee,” not a shot is fired or a lover betrayed. Bibb calls his music "upside-down blues" because it's about life's joys, not life's problems. It's sincere and satisfying, not at all saccharine.

We hear many of last year’s songs again: “Stagolee,” “Shingle by Shingle,” “Still Livin’ On,” “Connected,” “River Blues,” “Kokomo,” “Diamond Days,” “The Cape,” “I Heard the Angels Singing,” “Get on Board,” “For You,” “In My Father’s House.”

We also hear many songs Bibb didn’t bring us last time around. (As before, he owns the whole night at the Dakota, two generous sets with a short break between. Tickets are for both sets and tables aren’t turned.) He precedes every song with a story, drawing us closer.

“New Home,” he tells us, is a song he performed in Seattle the night Obama was elected. The lyrics fit: “I’ll put your feet on solid ground by and by/When the river gets to rising, you’ll be high and dry.” His “Pockets” is a love song, first recorded on the Swedish audiophile label Opus 3. (Bibb lived in Stockholm for ten years; he makes his home in Finland now. He hasn’t lived in the states since 1985.) “Saucer ’n’ Cup” is also a love song (“You’re looking at a satisfied man”), and he sings it for friends in the house who are celebrating their 35th anniversary. “Marital bliss is not a big blues theme,” he says wryly by way of introduction.

He prefaces “River Blues” by saying “Here comes the other side of that coin” (everyone laughs), “a song I wrote after the umpteenth time of realizing sometimes it’s better to take a walk than try to talk.” Does the man give lessons? (That was not meant for you, HH.) “Going Down Slow” is one of the few songs we hear that isn’t a Bibb original. Written by St. Louis Jimmy, who played piano for Muddy Waters, it’s sadder, bluer. (“I don’t need no doctor/He can’t do me no good….”) Watch it here. Video quality poor but song a classic.



Bibb has an essential sweetness and optimism about him; his smile is radiant, his ways gentle. He seems open and genuine, not shiny and false. He can't possibly say something completely different every time he introduces a song, but his words never sound like the same old patter. Sometimes he ventures into blues shouts and growls and he’s convincing there as well. But he seems overall like the satisfied man of which he sings, talking affectionately about his son, Sebastian, and his own mother. “She says to never leave this song off my set list,” he says before playing and singing “Don’t Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down.”

We hear “Panama Hat,” “Right on Time” (a tune that grew out of the generosity of older musicians), “Sebastian’s Tune” (“I told my son I’d play it every time I was missing him on the road”), “The Needed Time.” Like last year, the crowd is attentive, respectful.

What must it be like to come through a curtain onto a stage, face a crowd, and put it all out there: your voice, your personality and emotions, your words and melodies and musicianship? A singer-songwriter is a courageous person, like a solo dancer must be, or any solo musician, or an actor in a one-person show, or a poet giving a reading. In the end, they're all tightrope walkers. Bibb does more than sing songs and play guitar. He lifts us up.

While he was here in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Bibb spoke with Dale Connelly and performed three of his songs in the Minnesota Public Radio studios. Listen here.
Visit his new website, learn more about him, and hear a few more songs.
Read about last year's show.
Photo by John Whiting.

Peace, love and Marcia Ball

When: Sunday, Dec. 14, 2008 • Where: Dakota • Who: Marcia Ball, keyboard and vocals; Thad Scott, tenor sax; Andrew Nafziger, guitar; Don Bennett, electric bass; Corey Keller, drums

On the first real winter night of 2008, as snow falls and the temperature plummets and icy winds blow the Holidizzle parade down Nicollet Mall, Marcia Ball brings some New Orleans heat to the Dakota. She and her band give us 90 minutes of bluesy, rollicking, good-times music and touching songs including “Louisiana” (“six feet of water in Evangeline….”). Heads nod all around. It’s an open-curtain crowd, what looks like a full house, mostly people I haven’t seen here before—not the jazz audience.

We hear several tunes from her latest CD, Peace, Love & BBQ: the title track, “Married Life,” “Falling Back in Love with You” (“squeezing tight, kissing slow, Ray Charles on the stereo…”), “Party Town,” “Where Do You Go.” Also songs from the Marcia Ball catalog: “Red Beans,” “Down the Road,” the boogie-woogie rouser “Crawfishin’.”

She has a voice like a male blues shouter; nothing fancy but it gets the job done. She can whistle through her teeth. The Dakota’s Yamaha grand has been pushed to the back of the stage and she’s playing a Roland at the front. Wonder why? To be nearer the audience? She fits her long tall self behind the keyboard and plays like she means it.

Her banter is easy and warm. In brief bursts between songs she tells us how certain tunes came to be, and about her hometown on the Texas/Louisiana border (“on the easy-drinking side, the ‘Loose-iana’ side; on Saturday night all the Baptists would come and act like Catholics”). She explains that before Peace, Love & BBQ there was a time when she couldn’t write: “I was kind of angry. Then my friend Tracy Nelson sent me a song about homelessness and poverty [‘Where Do You Go’] and once I did that I could write my silly stuff.” She says she and her band never used to come north in the winter and “now I know what snow tires are for.” She’s been watching Holidizzle pass (she can catch glimpses through the windows onto the mall) and notes she has never seen a parade go by so fast. She thinks we’re crazy for having parades in the winter.



The set officially ends with the delightful “I Want to Play with Your Poodle,” they exit, and Ball returns for a powerful solo encore: “Ride It Out,” the tale of a house in Mississippi that was carried away by Katrina’s flooding and survived intact. Then the band reconvenes for “I Wish You Well,” one of the best end-the-set, say-goodbye tunes ever written, a sweet benediction: “I wish you sunshine, flowers, and smiles/I wish you ribbons tied up in your hair.”

Apologies for the pitiful photos (which are not by John Whiting).

Robben Ford

When: Sunday, June 13, 2008 • Where: Dakota • Who: Robben Ford, voice and lead guitar; Travis Carlton, bass; Toss Panos, drums

Ford and Charlie Musselwhite share the billing tonight at the Dakota but never the stage (though early promos said they would do a set together, and they have performed together in the past). For the 7:00 show, we hear that Ford came on first, then Musselwhite. The 9:30 started with Musselwhite. Now it’s Ford.

Someone calls out “Rockin’ Robin!” and he says “Oh, please, not tonight.” The same boneheads keep requesting “Talk to Your Daughter” over and over throughout the evening. People, get a clue. He does not want to play that song.

The music is painfully and unnecessarily loud (thanks, Deborah, for the ear plugs, which will help to prevent me from becoming a stone-deaf old lady) but definitely rockin’. We hear “Lateral Climb,” about the problems of credit-card debt and the struggle to get ahead (“Try to make a little progress in what’s looking like a lateral climb/Put behind me my spendthrift ways”), “Don’t Deny Your Love,” “Prison of Love,” and “Riley B. King,” a tribute to “a king without a castle or a crown” and “a life sincerely lived,” written with Keb’ Mo’, someone I’m dying to hear live.

Ford tells us that his bassist is the son of Larry Carlton and “plays his ass off.” So does Panos in an impressive and thundering drum solo. So does Ford, switching guitars and giving us what I swear is a piece of “Smoke in the Water.”



It’s so loud! Arena rock loud! Even with the ear plugs! Dear Dakota, you have hosted the tender piano-key caresses of Gonzalo Rubalcaba and the soft-spoken ruminations of Patricia Barber. Can’t someone on the sound board notice the size of the room and keep it down just a bit? Bring on the blues, the fusion, even the rock, but stop trying to make my ears bleed.

Ford turns political with “Peace on My Mind.” “The call to war is blind man leading blind/Every day more and more I’ve got peace on my mind…. When fire meets fire, we burn away the common ground.” And ends with “Supernatural,” a beautiful song about being beautiful.

Photos by John Whiting.

Charlie Musselwhite

When: Sunday, July 13, 2008 • Where: Dakota • Who: Charlie Musselwhite, voice and harmonica; Matt Stubbs, lead guitar; Mike Phillips, electric bass; June Corr, drums

Rangy and seamed, looking older than his 64 years (something about a long battle with alcohol), Charlie Musselwhite steps through the curtain and turns the Dakota jazz club into a roadhouse.

Lanky girl, man, she’s long and tall
Sleeps in the kitchen with her feet out in the hall

The Dakota is booking more blues lately, which draws a different crowd but doesn’t sit well with some jazz fans. After the revelation that was Eric Bibb, I’m fine with it, and it helps keep the doors open.

Blues, why you worry me
Why you stay so long?
I used to drink to keep from worrying
Now I ride from town to town

Musselwhite has a metal briefcase full of harps. When he’s not playing he’s singing the blues through a big happy smile.

You know it ain’t right when you stay out all night long
I ain’t got nobody to carry my business on

With jazz, especially experimental jazz, you never know what will happen next. The blues has a form that’s as familiar as a sofa—line, repeat, new line. Because it’s repetitive, it can get a little trancey. So you listen differently, nod your head differently, tap your feet differently, and get into the story, most often a tale of heartache. Even in Brazil, where Musselwhite went to hear the blues and, he tells us, brought a little back, “they’re singing in Portuguese but if you translate they’re all singing ‘My baby left me.’ It’s a worldwide situation.”

Work hard in Chicago
Me and my boss couldn’t get along
All I got to show is muscle in my arm



“If I Should Have Bad Luck” hits me; it’s one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard. The melody is bouncy but the lyrics are killer. Will love save him? What do you think?

If I should have bad luck a long long way from home
Honey I know your love will keep me going
Passing people’s houses on a dark and lonesome road
Look so cozy, places I can’t go…
I can see everybody’s people but I can’t see mine

Musselwhite's voice is low and rumbly, weary and knowing and conversational, and I love how he plays the harmonica, which speaks its own wild and expressive language. Thank you, Charlie, and John Hammond Jr., and Howard Levy, and dearest Toots Theilemans, for helping me to hear the harmonica, which I dismissed as a child’s instrument for years because I had one as a child.

Is “The Blues Overtook Me” a song about childhood depression, or about learning early what your path in life will be?

When I was a kid, early on my own
I took the highway to be my home
But the blues overtook me when I was a little child
You know fast women and whiskey made this lonesome boy wild

Later I read that Musselwhite has won a metal briefcase full of W.C. Handy awards and Grammy nominations. He went off the sauce in 1987 and he’s proud of that. “I’ve had people who’ve had problems with alcohol talk to me about quitting,” he says on his website, “and tell me that I inspired them to quit.”

The set ends with a slow and achey ballad, “a tune I recorded in 1966, still a good tune.” It begins with a harp solo and turns into a wordless story. I head into the lobby after to buy a CD and have it signed. There aren’t as many people out there as I expected, or as there should be.

Photos by John Whiting

Eric Bibb

When: 4/18/08
Where: Dakota
Who: Eric Bibb

Sometimes all you need is a man and his acoustic guitar. It was enough, it was ample and beneficent, when blues singer/songwriter Eric Bibb came to the Dakota for one night before a sold-out crowd at an open curtain show. He seemed a bit hesitant at first--he had to start one song over a few times because he kept skipping a verse--but we were with him and he knew it and it was magical.

Godson of Paul Robeson, nephew of John Lewis (of the Modern Jazz Quartet), son of folk singer Leon Bibb, Eric has an impeccable pedigree and a quietly powerful stage presence; you can't take your eyes off him. His voice is rich and husky; hear for yourself, and remember as you listen to these songs from his new CD, Get On Board, that at the Dakota there were no backup singers, no other instruments, no studio arrangements. Just a man and his acoustic guitar.

He's on tour with his new CD but sings and plays songs from earlier albums; he's been recording since 1980 and has made several. We hear "The Cape," a song by Guy Clark with wonderful lyrics: "He did not know he could not fly, so he did.... Spread your arms and hold your breath and always trust your cape." And "Stagolee," aka "Staggerlee," which Peter Lang called "Stackolee" when he played it at the Dakota six days ago. We hear "River Blues" and "Connected." Telarc, Bibb's label, has posted a video on YouTube of Bibb singing this song.



"Still Livin' On" is about Bibb's heroes: Mississippi John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotton. "Water" was inspired by Spike Lee's documentary film about Hurricane Katrina, When the Levees Broke. "Diamond Days" is "a song from my life as a troubador," and it's also a theme of the evening; Bibb says more than once that "this has been a diamond day."

He explains that "Kokomo" came to him in a personal crisis, and that "a truly inspired song is a mysterious entity...a blessing, a gift." "For You" is a love song: "Give me the pieces of your heart when it's broken/I'll mend it for you." "Shingle by Shingle" is about "putting your life together when you've trashed it." He's telling stories, singing songs (both originals and blues standards), holding us all in the palm of his hand. There's no club chit-chat tonight. This is church.

It seems like many of his songs are love songs, tender and sweet. He's singing the blues, but not the poor-me, I'm-a-loser blues. Bibb's blues are illuminated with rays of light: hope, belief in love, spirituality, sincerity. The final two songs of his last set are "I Heard the Angels Sing" and "Love Train:" "Make sure you're waiting at the station with your heart open wide." After all this, he gives us an encore: "In My Father's House." We don't want to let him go.

The Dakota has long been mostly a jazz club, and it's booking more blues lately, and there's talk among the regulars about whether that's a good idea or not. Some of the blues I don't care to see (some of the jazz, too, for that matter), but tonight I feel lucky to have heard this man and this guitar in such an intimate setting. Bring him back, please.



Top photo of Eric Bibb by John Whiting. Bottom: Bibb and the Dakota's lovely Deborah after the show.

Peter Lang

When: 4/12/08
Where: Dakota
Who: Peter Lang, guitar and voice; Joe Lang, electric guitar; Michael Tanner, harmonica; James Hauck, harmonica; Jonathan Thomas, bass; Dave King, drums

I first heard fingerstyle guitarist Peter Lang in the 1970s, when I was also listening to Koerner, Ray & Glover, Leo Kottke, and John Fahey. I last heard Lang in the 1970s, distracted from folk music and never to return.

I decide to go to the Dakota show when I learn Dave King will be Lang's drummer.



"If you came here to hear my tunes," Lang tells us, "you're out of luck. These are tunes that mentored me." His new CD, Testament, is old-time blues, what he calls "the DNA of American music."

One of his guitars is a deep, brilliant blue. It reminds me of Raphael Fraisse's violin. Fraisse was a gifted violinist who played with the Parisota Hot Club. He died of leukemia in 2006 at the criminally young age of 31, and we miss him.

Lang links his songs with stories; he likes to talk. His singing voice is gruff and growly, but his playing is ethereal. This is a CD release show, and we mostly hear songs from the new CD: "Freight Train," Leadbelly's "Keep Your Hands Off Her," "Brownsville Road," "Nobody's Business But My Own," the John Hurt tune "I'm Satisfied" ("I'm old enough to marry you/I'm satisfied/Tickled too...."), "Stackolee" (better known as "Staggerlee"), "Delia," "That''ll Never Happen No More," "Guitar Rag."

He prefaces many of the songs with information about where they came from, who wrote them, what they're about. It's a music history lesson as well as a performance. Not all musicians are comfortable talking to their audiences, or they may not be in the mood to talk, but I wish more would tell us a little about what they're playing. Some of us aren't there just to be entertained. We're there to learn.

"

"The blues," Lang says at some point during the evening, "is nothing but a good man feeling bad."

Harmonica player Michael Tanner is the man who convinced Lang to make this new CD. "He lured me into the studio with a good bottle of California wine," Lang explains. Joe is Lang's son; when asked how it feels to play with him, Lang says, "I could die happy." Steve Larkin, who plays bass on the CD, is replaced here by Jonathan Thomas, who does just fine. James Hauck, whom Lang introduces as "one of my oldest friends...we are brothers of different mothers," joins the band for "Brownsville Road."

Turns out Dave King is a blues and roots drummer. I'm surprised for about two seconds; he can probably play anything. This is a different side than I've seen with the Bad Plus or Happy Apple or any of his numerous other bands. Renewed admiration.

Lang ends the set with an original and sounds like he's playing a 10,000 string guitar.



Hear Dale Connelly interview Lang on MPR.

Photos, top to bottom: Peter Lang, Dave King, Joe Lang, Jonathan Thomas. All but King by John Whiting.