Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Bluesiana / Velden am Woerthersee / Austria
Concert date: 17.09.2009
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: €30.00 (presale) / €33.00 (day of show)
Bluesiana Rock Cafe is a club that never lets a music connoisseur down. This time four fantastic musicians made the trip. They’ve known each other for ages and have worked together on all sorts of projects, guested on each other’s solo albums, and shared plenty of beautiful, unforgettable moments on stages in the middle of huge stadiums, like legionnaires in the service of the big names in music, and so on…
We’re talking about a quartet made up of singer Bernard Fowler, guitarist Stevie Salas, bassist Jara Harris and drummer Dave Abruzzese. Let’s take a quick look at just what caliber this quartet is.
Stevie Salas is a guy who has released 18 solo studio albums so far. Over his career he has worked with some of the highest-flying names in the rock world, like Rod Stewart, Mick Jagger, George Clinton, the late Michael Hutchence (Inxs), Jeff Healey Band, Jordin Sparks, Justin Timberlake, and we could go on. He’s a top-class, versatile artist who always lands high on the lists of the world’s best guitarists in plenty of magazines and media outlets. His guitar playing is poetry without equal and a must for every music connoisseur.
The name Bernard Fowler, which has already stuck pretty firmly during his past visits to Bluesiana, is inseparably tied to the legendary Rolling Stones. Bernard is an essential studio and live part of the Rolling Stones machine, contributing mainly backing vocals both on stage and in the studio. In the past, Fowler has worked with artists like Ryuchi Sakamoto, Gill Scott-Heron, Sly & Robbie, Material, Bootsy Collins, Duran Duran, Herb Alpert, Paul Carrack, Yoko Ono, Living Colour, Herbie Hancock, and the list is far from over.
The rhythm section consists of jazz bassist Jara Harris of the band SlapBack, who’s the least familiar name of the four, and Dave Abruzzese, who made his name above all as a former member of Pearl Jam, with whom he recorded the first three albums, “Ten”, “Vs.” and “Vitalogy”. Abruzzese was a member of Pearl Jam between 1991 and 1994. After leaving Pearl Jam, Abruzzese founded his own musical project, Green Romance Orchestra, in 1997. The high pedigree of a musician like Dave Abruzzese is also shown by the fact that Axl Rose was very interested in him, since there are well-known joint studio sessions with the drummer from the early period of the making of the Guns N’ Roses album “Chinese Democracy” (2008).
Bluesiana once again drew a great crowd. Some 100 enthusiasts packed into the cozy club and waited eagerly for the stars to hit the stage. At exactly half past nine in the evening the guys walked on and kicked off the show with a jolt, with the song Your Future, from Bernard Fowler’s album “Friends With the Priviledge” – a song he wrote for the album together with Salas. And what else could it be but funk rock cranked up past all limits. This time something rare happened: the band set up five extra monitors in front of the stage, pointed back at themselves. The sound was deafening and, for the small space of Bluesiana, extremely loud. For a club, honestly right on the edge of acceptable. Fowler was bouncier than I can remember since I started going to his shows. The only problem was that he was a bit too hard to hear during the show, since Salas’s guitar was really cranked up to the extreme.
These seasoned stars served up an outstanding funk rock experience, in which the Abruzzese – Harris duo, with all their expressive power and ravenous temperament, almost took the lead from Salas’s guitar. The band also played songs from the Nickelbag project, where Abruzzese, Fowler and Salas are united on one album, namely Hit it And Quit It and Sweet Thang.
One of the nicest surprises was that, with everyone waiting for some Rolling Stones songs, the guys gave us no fewer than three of them, and the kind that are rarities in the Rolling Stones’ live repertoire, if they’re played at all. Rain Fall Down came first, then the excellent God Gave Me Everything toward the end, and the fantastic I Don’t Know Why right at the close. The guys certainly didn’t hide their sparkling sense of humor during the show, which showed just how good they felt on stage. Fowler’s worn-out line was there too, along with the joke that Charile Watts had left The Rolling Stones, which the audience of course didn’t buy for a second.
The guys kneaded out song after song as if in a trance and came across as completely equals. You’d expect guitar escapades from Salas, but he kept the show tightly and diligently under control, mostly with voluminous funky groove riffing. In the solos you can of course strongly feel the influence of Jimi Hendrix, plus a few tricks inherited from Jeff Beck. But Salas never acted like a guitar superman who had to soothe his ego with the obligatory 10-minute solo spots. Over an hour and three quarters, everything was subordinated to the creation of an ultra-possessive funky groove, which, as said, the band shaped together into a one-of-a-kind experience. Fans of the newer Glenn Hughes, T.M. Stevens, Living Colour, or oldies in the vein of Blood Sweat And Tears really didn’t stay indifferent this time in Bluesiana.
The band, with Stevie Salas as the tour’s commander, naturally also touched on presenting Stevie Salas’s current studio album “Be What It Is” (2008) through the songs Are The Gods Smiling On Me, Two Souls War’n In A Bag Of Skin, and Long Way To Roll. To that they added the excellent Grooveline from Salas’s album “Soul Blasters”, a taste of teenage years overflowing with testosterone with Teenage Love Affair (“The Electric Pow Wow”), and spiced up the show with the first track from Salas’s 1990 studio debut “Colorcode”, called Stand Up!
Through all of this, the most interesting thing is the musicians’ attitude toward the audience. It’s completely ordinary. You’d think you’d get proper lofty stardom, after everything these people have breathed in over their careers, from playing the biggest concert venues to the biggest possible crowds and, well, swimming in money, and the fact that they’ve gone all the way to the bottom of the music business and there are no more hide-and-seek games or riddles left for them. But it was exactly the opposite. The four of them enjoy anonymity, which they put to good use to have a blast on the concert stages and in the intimate club spaces of Europe. The show flew by in an hour and three quarters like the snap of a finger, such a hypnotically possessive performance we got to enjoy through an unforgettable funk lesson!
Once again I’d like to express great respect to the owner of the club Bluesiana Rock Cafe Gudrun Koffler. She literally spoils us with an excellent concert lineup full of sparkling enthusiasm that clearly knows no letting up, no backing down! So a new hot autumn is in store at Bluesiana!
photos: Robi Lipej
Setlist
1. Your Future 2. Sweet Thang 3. Hit It And Quit It 4. Rain Fall Down 5. Are The Gods Smiling On Me 6. So Dagged 7. Two Souls War’n In A Bag Of Skin 8. Long Way To Roll 9. You Know What I Mean 10. Get Away 11. God Gave Me Everything 12. Grooveline 13. Teenage Love Affair 14. I Don’t Know Why 15. Stand Up!
Photo gallery
