Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Teatro Miela (Dom pristaniških delavcev) / Trieste (Trst) / Italy
Concert date: October 11, 2011
Attendance: 300
Ticket price: €20.00
When the famous Eric Sardinas starts rumbling on the dobro and roaring in his thunderous, sandpaper-rough voice, that’s a magnet for an unforgettable live experience. The black musketeer, many simply call him the “king of the dobro”, with a coal-black curly mane and his obligatory crumpled hat, black in his soul, black in his heart, black in everything! That’s what happens when the black blood of the blues runs through your veins! Eric is considered one of the most authentic blues performers around, and one of the most authentic performers period when it comes to stage presence.
Trieste. Dom pristaniških delavcev, a gorgeous setting for enjoying a spectacle like this, famous for its excellent acoustics and a place we always love coming back to! This time Eric rolled in with his two Big Motor buddies: his regular sidekick Lavelle Price (bass guitar) and new drummer Chris Frazier. Yes. You read that right! The latter made a name for himself with Edgar Winter, Eddie Money, Steve Vai, and in the wondrous lineup “Tak Matsumoto Group”, where he shared the stage with Eric Martin (Mr. Big) and Jack Blades (Night Ranger). But his pedigree really took off from 2006 onward, when, on Doug Aldrich’s recommendation, he joined David Coverdale’s legendary Whitesnake, recorded the album “Good To Be Bad” (2008) with them and became part of the band’s world tour at the time.
A blast of high-potency blues rock defiance shook the hall’s foundations at 10:15 p.m.! After warming up his fingers with the famous routine of fitting the slide onto the pinky of his left hand and adjusting the tuning pegs on the neck of the guitar, Eric Sardinas stepped right to the edge of the stage and asked the crowd: “Everybody feeling good!?!?” Then, after a few venomously twisted licks along the dobro, he and Big Motor burst into a flirtatiously twisting blues boogie rock number, Worried Man Blues, which instantly got some 300 people in the crowd moving in sync.
When Sardinas is on stage, the temperature shoots up to boiling point! The guy clearly loved the setting tonight. The trio got a real stage to stretch out on, and Sardinas literally whirled from one end of it to the other, flailing wildly with his instrument. Boundless spontaneity! He got himself properly tangled up in his cable on one of the monitors a few times and, in one of the breaks between songs, took his time to first “unwind” himself from the monitor, then commented: “Looks like it’s gonna be my problem tonight!”
The trio torched the stage with songs like the venomously predatory, rhythmic Flames Of Love, the new Road To Ruin from the just-released album “Sticks And Stones” (2011), the almost obligatory Texola, and he fired up the crowd especially hard when he got them to sing along to the chorus of Down To Whiskey! The devilish dictum to the ladies, Treat Me Right, wasn’t missing from the set, and neither was I Can’t Be Satisfied, played in the closing stretch!
The moments where the man set aside a few minutes to take us toward the authentic heritage of “Mississippi Delta blues” were Robert Johnson covers Hell Hound On My Trail and Come On In My Ktchen. Eric steps to the edge of the stage and, in a “stripped-down” version, through the charisma of exceptional potency and unbridled energy, which he clearly draws from inexhaustible springs, arrives at an extraordinary interpretation that has no equal in the world of blues music. He hypnotizes the room with sensual waves of vocal articulation, an exceptional blend of expression that captures feelings of pain, longing, rage and defiance. In the piece 8 Goin’ South, Eric pushed his rugged manliness onto a side track for a few moments and bared the tender side of his heart. He also stunned with the inclusion of the blues standard I Wonder Who, which the late, great blues hero Rory Gallagher also tackled in his day! Eric’s version was once again completely stripped down!
The man, who sweated out hectoliters on stage, took a little time for a break in the middle of the show, and Price and then Frazier skillfully filled the gap with excellent solo spots. The maestro, armed with an extraordinary combination of feel and spontaneity, wove those two elements through the whole performance with a sparkling playfulness that radiated absolute authenticity, where you can never predict what comes next! You really can’t go deeper into the heritage of blues rhetoric. Almost two hours of high-potency show, roaring raw power of stretched-out licks, where you could watch iron filings flying off the strings and wood shavings off the dobro, all controlled by a distinctive finger-picking technique drenched in vocal thunder. An Eric Sardinas show! No retreat and no mercy for anyone. Blues eroticism and black longing that tames and chains up even the devil himself, until he turns into a little, cowering puppy !
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
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