A Legit Heir to Dire Straits Is Born (2012)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik

Location: Munich / Muffathalle / Germany
Concert date: March 17, 2012
Attendance: 700
Ticket price: €28.00

The Straits are, in fact, today’s continuation of Dire Straits. Come again? A provocative way to kick off a story, right? After 1995, when Mark Knopfler disbanded Dire Straits without any fuss or fanfare, quiet as a mouse, nothing much worth mentioning happened, other than our guitar wizard »Markus« carrying on with his solo career and effectively »teasing« Dire Straits nostalgics on his tours with a repertoire that always dipped into Dire Straits classics. Not least, some of you may remember his unforgettable stop in Ljubljana on May 3, 2005, when Tivoli was bursting at the seams (RockLine report HERE)? It’ll soon be a solid seven years, and quite soon 17 years since Dire Straits said goodbye.

The years go by, and even Knopfler can no longer boast that overflowing eclectic freshness in his studio work, the kind that enthroned him in the league of the most influential and recognizable rock guitarists of all time. As for Dire Straits, they just rest in the dusty treasury of rock archives, like a bee going through a fruitless faux-coitus on an orchid blossom… But memories live on. Then 2011 rolls around, and Alan Clark, Knopfler’s former Dire Straits keyboardist and buddy through thick and thin, has had enough! He drums up a septet, names it The Straits and decides that he and the crew will play Dire Straits classics live! Without Mark Knopfler in the lineup. Luckily he gets Knopfler’s full blessing to play Dire Straits classics live, which means The Straits are granted full legitimacy and continuity of the legacy of the rock giants. And believe me, Clark has cooked up one hell of a lineup!

The Straits first introduced themselves to a wider European audience as the opening act for American rock giants The Eagles, and some of you already caught their show in Graz last June. With jaws on the floor and tongues dragging, I assume. Plenty of high-flying praise has gone around for The Straits’ reinterpretation of Dire Straits classics, and the most ardent fans and eyewitnesses of their show were convincing in assuring everyone that Terence Reis is an excellent approximation of Mark Knopfler. That caressing purr delivered flawlessly, and likewise the sound, the guitar solos, the specifics of Knopfler’s one-of-a-kind trademark playing, all studied down to every little detail. Of course that stirs up a sea of curiosity, enough to kill a cat if need be!

A new (this time March) European tour, a new opportunity. This time The Straits are the headliners, which means nearly two hours of live Dire Straits classics. But first, let’s meet the band! Its leader is Alan Clark! The keyboardist who left his mark on the famous Dire Straits records. Keeping him company are saxophonist Chris White – the authentic Dire Straits sax, in other words – Tom Petty & The Heartbrakers’ regular drummer Steve Ferrone, the most important piece of the puzzle Terence Reis, who has to fill Knopfler’s demanding shoes, bassist Mick Feat, a young additional keyboardist, percussionist, backing vocalist and acoustic guitarist Jamie Squire, and additional guitarist Adam Phillips, who stepped in as a replacement for Phil Palmer!

Munich’s Muffatfthalle is an ideal space for acts of The Straits’ caliber, who are expected to draw around 1,500 people to their shows there. The hall has always proven itself as a venue with excellent, thoroughly trustworthy acoustics – not least because Canadian art rock legends Saga recorded their live album and DVD »Live In Munich« there in late 2007 (RockLine review HERE, RockLine report HERE)! The location couldn’t have served better for yet another concert of pristine, perfectly balanced sound and the kind of performance The Straits conjured up this time.

The opening act, British singer-songwriter John Allen, wrapped up his set in 40 minutes; sadly we skipped him and showed up at Muffathalle a measly 5 minutes before The Straits went on. The hall goes dark, the band led by Alan Clark steps on stage, and the crowd welcomes them with thunderous ovations. The synth curtain kicks in, and that recognizable phrase on the xylophone, played through Clark’s synthesizer and accompanied by the gentle caress of White’s soprano sax, wakes everyone up! Private Investigations. The first phrase of Terence Reis’s flamenco guitar comes in and slowly sucks the audience into a unique world of magic…. I don’t want to blow this out of proportion, but it’s a fact. Vocally, Terence can be an almost identical copy of Mark Knopfler, if he wants to. He’s certainly far better equipped technically, which showed later in the concert, but if you closed your eyes and focused on your eardrums alone, you could easily fool yourself into thinking the real Dire Straits with Knopfler at the helm were up there. Goosebumps wash over your body in an instant! It can’t be any other way in a situation like this, and that’s the basic sign that we came to the right concert! The opening alone confirmed that The Straits made good on what they set out to do. From the first beat to the last, with the rich sonic backdrop the guys built on stage, Terence Reis’s distinctive »Knopfler-like« vocals, and certainly the unforgettable screaming overdriven tone of Adam Phillips at the end of the song, with that piercingly sharp »lick« that brings the song back to the motif of the bare heartbeat of a darkened hall, only to explode into the closing crescendo! As close to the original as it gets, practically triumphant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q9zUJks11o

Reis’s vocal departure from Knopfler was confirmed by the very next song, Walk Of Life, since in the middle to slightly higher registers Reis no longer fully nails Knopfler’s timbre. The audience got even more tender and surrendered completely to this heavily played Dire Straits evergreen, and the opening part of the concert also brought an interesting revelation: The Straits notably put the sax front and center in their arrangements, as Chris White was soloing intensively in practically every number. He had already dropped his solo into the middle of Private Investigations, and in this respect every song in the repertoire is »prettified«. This made the character of the originals grow even more, and upgraded them.

Classic after classic. One of the concert’s peaks came in the very first part of the show, when the band tackled the one-of-a-kind Telegraph Road and Reis, for the first time (in the intro of the song), also picked up the »national steel« guitar. It’s identical to the one on the cover of the Dire Straits album »Brothers In Arms« (with a palm tree on the body). So that’s not a dobro, but a »national steel« guitar. The difference is relatively small. A dobro usually produces sound with just a single metal resonator cone, whereas a »national steel« can do it with three. A dobro usually has a wooden body, whereas the body of a »national steel« guitar is usually entirely metal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF4ITRqd-uM

Anyway, the »national steel« stayed in Reis’s hands, because Romeo And Juliet followed, one of the most beautiful love ballads rock music has ever produced (I spoke too soon, because it was quickly followed on the setlist by the fragile Your Latest Trick, wrapped in a Hawaiian breeze, with Chris White’s unforgettable lead motif and sweet, erogenous solo seasoning on sax!!!). The band rearranged Romeo And Juliet a bit, playing the opening part considerably softer than the original, then catching the pulse of the original in the closing part, and above all, as already mentioned, with Chris White prominently involved on sax again! Magical.

It’s hard to single out highlights. There’s Telegraph Road, with an energy awfully similar to the closing stampede of Sultans Of Swing, the intimate Communique, then Brothers In Arms with unforgettable guitar playing full of exceptionally sensitive impressions (Chris White’s flute intro motif included!). If you had to pick out the less successful picks on the setlist, it would probably be Two Young Lovers and Walk Of Life, which I could easily have done without and swapped for Love Over Gold, Once Upon A Time In The West or Where Do You Tink You’re Going?.

Subtle playing by exceptional musicians, filling the available spectrum of the sound picture so well that you could hear a pin drop on the stage floor. Complementing each other, perfectly in sync. No point wasting more words on this; you have to experience it yourself at the first opportunity. This evening the band performed a completely new song live for the first time in its existence, one RockLine had already witnessed at the band’s soundcheck in Muffathalle around five in the afternoon. The original song Jesus Street, with an exceptionally lovely melodic contour that seduces you on the very first listen, is an important sign that the band’s debut is cooking behind it all. If it goes in the style of this song, we’ll most likely get in The Straits a competent evolutionary successor to Dire Straits. And that’s not all. The band actually has two originals up its sleeve; the second is Looking For America, which they also rehearsed at soundcheck, but it needs a bit more time to be polished before the band can add it to the live repertoire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC11hC5EmXg

Let me also highlight the close of the regular set with the must-have Sultans Of Swing. This is where the concert hit its crescendo, and the band once again brilliantly crowned its overall tightness after the calm section in the middle of the song, building up to a closing finale spiced with a juicy interweaving of solos and exceptional harmony in the weaving of the lead melodies, especially between White’s sax and Reis’s guitar.

After the expected Money For Nothing and a nice surprise in the lithe, organic and bright Portobello Belle (both in the encore), where Reis’s »national steel« once again »sang« at full tilt, the guys said goodbye after almost two hours on stage and left us ecstatic. Perfect sound, perfect execution! No joke here. Credible and worthy all the way, every step of the walk in Dire Straits’ shoes. I don’t know why Mark Knopfler won’t give us Dire Straits back, but if it never happens, music generations are from now on completely off the hook from the painstaking search for a live execution of Dire Straits’ music. The Straits are born! Terence Reis is truly a strong trump card. With him, The Straits can develop artistically in a solid, carefree and flexible way, while charging full speed through the great repertoire of rock legends! Nice prospects for the future!