Had another one of those great music weekends seeing songwriter extraordinaire Nick Lowe on Friday and saxophone master Joe Lovano on Saturday.
Nick Lowe is making a short, rare U.S. tour with his full English band so this show became a must attend date for me. Lowe’s band is a real English all-star group featuring Geraint Watkins (keyboards), Robert Trehern (drums), Johnny Scott (guitar) and Matt Radford (bass). Having seen Nick more times than I can remember his voice seems so much better now than I remember it from the old days of the Rockpile band. Rockpile was the simply put one of the greatest traditional rock band ever, with Nick on bass, Billy Bremner and Dave Edmunds on guitar and Terry Williams on drums. As a live act they rank as probably one of the best 10 bands ever, spewing out a crushing blend of rock, blues, rockabilly, and country. I always thought Nick was a bit of a shaky singer back in those days but not so at the Somerville Theatre Friday night. His singing was spot on as was his relaxed and funny stage patter (his routine on the cost of bringing the band to America was classic underplayed British humor). His band had a very heavy British rockabilly flavor and recast some of the older classics “I Knew the Bride,” “Cruel to be Kind” in that mold to great success. The show drew mostly from Lowe’s later material, which was fine as the quality of his output has remained consistently superb throughout his long career.
The opening act was another “new wave” fav – Graham Parker who (like Lowe) continues to produce one great record after another while laboring in relative market obscurity. Parker played a solo set and was, as you would expect, funny, acerbic and smart. Such great fun to see him again, I reminded him after the show of his date at the Paradise where he and his band the Rumor blew out the entire electrical system in the club because they were playing so loud, he laughed heartily.
On Saturday we ventured to the new “Backstage Bistro” at the North Shore Music Theatre to have an excellent dinner and to see Joe Lovano and his band Us Five. Sponsored by the new North Shore Jazz Project, Us Five is an amazing jazz quintet made up of Lovano on saxophones, James Weidman on piano, Petar Slavov on bass and Francisco Mela and Otis Brown III on drums. The 2 drummers set up on either side of the bass player and Lovano, providing a stunning, complex dialog of rhythm behind Lovano. The duel drummers were instantly the most unique element of the group, at times playing together at other times trading off between each other. Lovano was amazing, possessing the lighter tone of John Coltrane, who he defiantly channeled in some of the more blistering parts of the show. Lovano’s seeming unending flow of inventive improvisation was a wonder to behold. In that respect he reminded me of Sonny Rollins, at time I would think he just can’t keep this up but he did – over and over again. The set was mostly made up of material from the bands wonderful Blue Note CD “FolkArt” as well as from their upcoming release.
It is become increasingly rare for jazz artists to have the economic stability to maintain a steady group, Lovano is able to do this and his listeners benefit from the cohesion and musical telepathy that such a band can generate.
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