Performers: Dr. Feelgood, Eric Gales, Glenn Hughes
Location: Pordenone / Parco San Valentino / Italy
Date: July 6, 2018
The 27th edition of the Pordenone Blues Festival literally snuck up on us from behind. July is packed with concert adventures, and this trip to Pordenone wasn’t even planned. We decided to go at the very last minute. The festival normally runs for a week, and we picked the day whose lineup offered three seriously interesting acts. In order, the stage belonged to Dr. Feelgood, Eric Gales with his backing band, and the eternally statuesque “Voice of Rock”, his most illustrious highness, Glenn Hughes. The latter had announced a setlist written strictly for Deep Purple purists, since he was supposedly going to play nothing but Deep Purple classics, mostly from the era when the band was running its Mk IV and Mk V lineups.
The organizers had thought of a ton of little touches and details. Above all, the venue was generously stocked with food and drink, there was a spacious green parkland lawn where the festival takes place every year, and a solid, roomy stage. First onto the stage were the legendary British boogie blues rock’n’roll rascals Dr. Feelgood. A band that, over its long-lived career, has pretty much nothing left to hide, they’re now considered a true “rock dinosaur”. Formed in 1971 in Essex, England, the band now runs without any of its original or founding members. The longest-serving member of the current lineup is drummer Kevin Morris, who joined in the first half of the eighties. The rest of the quartet is made up of vocalist Robert Kane, guitarist Steve Walwyn and bassist Phil Mitchell. Yep. Rock ‘n’ roll runs in these guys’ blood, and there’s no need to shout it from the rooftops. Everything is in its place, and the band is incredibly self-assured. Sound-wise and performance-wise. Hard and manly. Rough and uncompromising. Unbending and untamed. For their age, the quartet holds up remarkably well. Singer Robert Kane’s excellent banter, which also supplied plenty of jokes and mocking tomfoolery, guaranteed the cheerful and very positive mood that reigned throughout the set, while the band blasted through a heap of original classics led by Back in the Night, Roxette, Shotgun, She Does It Right, Going Back Home, Down at the Doctors and, in the closing stretch, a cover of the classic Give Me One More Shot.
A long break followed. Then the Eric Gales Band took the stage. Eric Gales is a great guitar ace and virtuoso. He’s got 15 studio albums in his pocket and plenty of guest appearances on other artists’ records. He walked out with his backing band, anchored by the solid, outstanding rhythm section of Orlando Thompson on bass and Nick Hayes on drums, while the extra programming, sampling, percussion and backing vocals were handled by none other than Eric’s life partner, LaDonna Gales. In his own way, Eric has managed to create a musical hybrid all his own, built on extremely elegant blues rhetoric that flirts with a variety of genres with incredible skill. What makes Gales special is that, despite being right-handed, he plays the guitar flipped the other way around (like Hendrix did), and also with the high E string mounted at the bottom, so his chord shapes work as a mirror image of the standard way of fretting chords. That’s how his brother taught him to play, and his brother is actually left-handed. In the guitar world, the player best known for this technique is Albert King, and among the better-known blues virtuosos, Coco Montoya, for one, plays the guitar this way too.
This crew also appears on Gales’s current album “Middle of the Road”, which Eric naturally used for a concise showcase, playing Boogie Man and Swamp from it. Somewhere in the second half of the show, extended solo spots went to Thompson and Hayes too, who showed off their exceptional chops and stunned the crowd. There was no shortage of humor during the show either. The quick-tongued Gales kept feeding the crowd heartfelt stories and jokes, above all cracking juicy gags at his own expense. He cunningly reworked the Blue Oyster Cult classic Don’t Fear the Reaper, and toward the end he bewitched all the Hendrix fans with his version of the classic Voodoo Chile. That the Eric Glaes Band create exceptional rhythmic kinetics and a springy groove goes without saying. That funky kinetic energy and the potent, warm vibe of the low end is seasoned with the juicy, full guitar sound of Eric’s fiery playing. The effect is tantalizing all the way through and incredibly alluring. A concert performance that completely enchanted and swept us away. Especially since Gales is otherwise very hard to catch in these corners of Europe. Hand on heart, to be honest, I didn’t even know before the show what kind of performance I was actually walking into. So it turned out I’d have made a mistake if I hadn’t shown up in Pordenone that day.
Last up on stage was the famous Glenn Hughes. A man who played Ljubljana twice in the previous decade of the new millennium. Glenn has recently revived and stepped up his solo activities too, and so we caught him last year and the year before at two shows in Austria. After the new release by the famous Black Country Communion, sadly we again didn’t get to see any shows by this super rock lineup, so Glenn decided that this season he’d put together a series of his own concerts around the globe where he’d play only Deep Purple material from his time with that band. So he completely overhauled the lineup that accompanied him last year. Alongside Hughes, the crew includes returning guitarist J.J. Marsh, keyboardist Jesper Bo “Jay Boe” Hansen, who “did business” on stage with a Hammond XK-5 system and a real Leslie amp, while the lesser-known Fernando Escobedo sat behind the drums . Even though the official promo text advertises Soren Andersen as the guitarist of this new Hughes project, stepping into his boots for the Pordenone show was an old Hughes acquaintance J.J Marsh, who collaborated with Hughes on quite a few of his solo albums, as well as on the HTP (Hughes Turner Project) project.
Hughes has let his hair grow out again, so he’d look closer to the Glenn of the seventies. The whole crew tried to chase the magic of the Deep Purple Mk IV and Mk V lineups. Hansen worked licks into his Hammond organ solo spots similar to those of the great Jon Lord, and Escobedo, in a short solo bit, imitated Ian Paice’s “soloisms” as best he could. The hardest job once again fell to J.J. Marsh, who had to hold up the playing of guitar geniuses Ritchie Blackmore and Tommy Bolin. The band “tripped over itself” a few times during the show. Actually, it was sloppy on a few transitions. Less decisive and less precise. Otherwise, about what you’d expect from Hughes and company. Glenn once again killed it vocally, the way only he can, though he trimmed his solo vocal escapades a bit during Mistreated, where he usually blows up full-bloodedly. It was wonderful to hear the mighty You Fool No One. But that one gave the lineup the most headaches. Especially keeping the rhythm and the transitions together. A pity Hughes didn’t swap the two Deep Purple classics from the Mk III era for a track off “Stormbringer”, “Burn” and/or “Come Taste the Band”. That would’ve set the whole thing on fire. But we gladly welcomed yet another version of Smoke on the Water and Highway Star. For the finale, Glenn put his bass in a roadie’s hands and turned into just a vocalist. The tech stood at the edge of the drum kit, where J.J. Marsch and Fernando Escobedo “whispered” the notes to him.
Glenn remains a vocal powerhouse. Remarkably well preserved. Vocally especially. He still comes across as boisterous, lively, engaged, bursting with surplus energy, and he radiates the hunger and desire to deliver the best he knows how. He enjoys the stage. And that’s the essence that keeps him up, upright, and drives him forward. A tremendous preacher, and truly one of the greatest rock singers of all time.
by: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
GLENN HUGHES:
1. Stormbringer
2. Might Just Take Your Life
3. Sail Away
4. You Fool No One
5. You Keep on Moving
6. Mistreated
7. Smoke on the Water
8. Georgia on My Mind
9. Highway Star
—encore—
10. Burn
