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There will be no pictures this evening of Doyle Bramhall
II because the cat played in the shadows with no spotlight. Regardless, he
sounded great. He was the second loud guitar player on stage in a poncho this
week which added to his good, bad, and ugly guitar-slinger mystique. His guitar
was an intense, psychedelic grumble and scream. It sonically mimicked Hendrix’s
“Star Spangled Banner” in spots along with The MC-5 at the Democratic National
Convention. He conjured this apocalyptic thunder by playing with a phase
shifter and tremolo left on for the entire set. It was rather ferocious, dense,
and vicious and did most of the talking as Bramhall was a man of few words,
opting to focus his attention on the task at hand: taming the dinosaur in his
amps.
Still
surfing on that R&B high that Sonny Knight and the Lakers put me on, I was
ripe and ready for Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings. It was an amazing
show with The Dap Kings laying down a solid groove as Jones bounced around the
stage like a pinball. Things almost got out of hand during the band’s send-up
to Gladys Knight when Jones suggested a few females join her which got
interpreted as “All the ladies make for the stage.” Her voice was raw emotion
with purpose. She shared about her cancer scare which made the jubilee on stage
that more poignant as she danced a non-stop celebratory tantrum to the delight
of the packed house.
Tedeschi Trucks Band had the unenviable task
of takin’ to the stage after Jones and the Kings leveled it. I’ve never been
one for huge bands (except for big band); there doesn’t seem to be enough room
for air between the notes. In this case I was wrong. What struck me most was
Derek Trucks’ slide guitar as it slithered around everything else on stage. It
was positively magical as he brought it from a whisper to a scream. It was
mesmerizing.
This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2015.
