Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Graz / Orpheum Teater / Austria
Concert date: 06.04.2013
Attendance: 700
These past few years Steve Lukather has been a hot, deliciously crunchy bun that somehow never goes stale. The man is busy as a bee. He records his solo studio albums and puts them out every two years, tours with art rock heavyweights Toto, and lately, more than ever, takes care to keep up the look of a devoted family man. The stage is his second home. He won’t nod along to that, but still. Truth be told, we could just as well call it his first. At least when it comes to earning a living, that is, and that’s what musicians today, with new studio releases earning next to nothing or nothing at all, make up for by staying on concert stages the whole time.
»Luke« has just put out his new solo studio album »Transition«, which is a touch more accessible – meaning it works as a more compact whole – so more melodic and also more »joyful«, let’s say more optimistic than its excellent predecessor »All’s Well that Ends Well« Steve has spent the last two years of his life going through a phase of major personal transition. He explained as much during one of the breaks in the show at the gorgeous Orpheum Teater, a hall we hadn’t set foot in since, no joke, 04.03.2011, when we last caught a Steve Lukather show right here.
The best gigs are the ones where the musician on stage has been known for years for his unique language of musical preaching. Luke is the master of six-string theory, famous for a one-of-a-kind delivery of studio and stage brilliance. Nobody usually misses an opening act before such musical oddities. And so Steve Lukather walked straight onstage, no warm-up band, with his backing crew of Eric »Monsieur Chocolat« Valentine on drums, Steve Weingart on keyboards and the dark-skinned panther Renee Jones on bass, at exactly half past eight in the evening.
Orpheum Teater was nicely packed this time, compared to our experience two years ago. You can tell Toto have just wrapped up two (if not three) European tours; the last time they played Austria was mid-August 2012. The memories are fresh, and so are the emotions. There must have been 700 people in the hall. They even opened the balcony, which doesn’t happen in Orpheum all that often.
Luke came out in semi-pointy boots, skin-tight stretch jeans and the classic oversized shirt (top three buttons provocatively undone, hanging down over the belly button, pardon, the waistline, with sleeves rolled up). Our good old »Candy man« with his pleasantly tousled hair kicks things off with the album »Transition« and the new Judgement Day. The man didn’t skimp on time, and right at the start he introduced his new »signature« Music Man model. It’s the third iteration of the »Luke« series, called the »L III«. The dual »humbucker« pickups are supposed to bring the guitarist closer to the fatter sound of the classic Gibson LP. The crowd was remarkably calm. In listening mode. Only the front row went a bit wild with emotion at moments; otherwise it was strict ear-and-eye focus on the musicians on stage. And the quartet is maturing. Over the years Weingart has adopted a little beard that even the most illustrious Kosobrin, Kekec’s long-bearded pal from the old tales, would envy, while the dark-skinned part of the crew has put on another »innocent little kilogram« of height in the two years since we last saw them on the stage of Zagreb’s Boogaloo.
The quartet is also remarkably tight. Yet still very careful about keeping the stage under control. Constant eye contact along the lines of Weingart – Valentine, or Valentine – Jones and so on. Lukather showed he was feeling great right from the start of the show, when in the middle of the instrumental part of the new Creep Motel he bounded over to Weingart on his right, then repeated the high-spirited dash to Jones at the far left of the stage. Before launching into Creep Motel, Steve explained that the song came about after he met quite a few »FB derailed souls« during his Facebook days.
As expected, going by RockLine’s experience of Steve Lukather shows since 2009, we ran into the first »Hendrixism« very early in the set, when Luke tackled an outstanding cover of Hendrix’s Freedom, which he originally put down on the studio album »Candyman« (1994). From the same record came the ever-obligatory Song For Jeff, dedicated to his departed “brother” Jeff Porcaro, the eminent drummer of Toto’s original lineup. It no longer surprises anyone, either, that he pays tribute to the figure and work of Jeff Beck, which Steve returned to by working in Beck’s The Pump near the end of the show. A third such moment, one that inevitably recalls Jeff Beck’s influence and his guitar ideology on the shaping of Lukather as a musician, was the closing instrumental Smile by Charlie Chaplin – the second encore, which Steve played only against the backdrop of his colleague Weingart’s caressing synth rays.
So. The sound gets a minus, and Lukather’s vocals, sadly, a second minus. The guitar was a bit too loud in the room, but that didn’t really spoil the mood, which stayed cheerful, positive and fun the whole way through! Lukather’s voice, though, has been fading over the years. Already during the show he signaled with gestures a few times that his throat wasn’t at its freshest. He really struggled through Darkness In My World. This show also confirmed that Steve is handing off more and more of his vocal duties to bassist Renee Jones.Over the course of the set his voice wears down, and that’s just an unavoidable fact. Toto shows are a different story, where he has two, maybe three vocal spots. He always handles those with confidence. At solo shows, though, his voice is under that much more strain.
All of that waters down to nothing, though, once everyone focuses on the adventure of the unique experience that Luke’s stage revelation of six-string theory puts on. Luke is first and foremost a guitarist. He was and always will be. Fans of his music come to the shows first and foremost for the language of his guitar playing. Luke once again set Orpheum Teater on fire and put a spell on the audience, who didn’t skimp on enthusiasm, firing off thunderous salvos of ovations throughout the show. As one. From the first row to the last. Luke once again captivated with his versatility, flexibility, adaptability, emotion and insight. He never runs out of sophistication and absolute control – the control and the superior fine-tuned coordination of right hand with left is astonishing. Especially in the spots where you have to be soft as »swan down«. Take the moments when Luke bends the melody by hanging on the whammy bar and spinning the tremolo arm. Of course, all that is balanced out with the necessary bursts of shaking notes, which also force your ears into full alertness.
Lukather didn’t forget to honor the Toto diehards either, taking on the song from the album »Kingdom Of Desire« (1992) titled Never Enough, which closed the regular part of the show. Not to mention the nod to his apprentice years working with Steely Dan, when Luke tacked the motif of the song Josie onto the outro of one of the numbers in the regular set.
A barely two-hour set that flies by in the blink of an eye. It’s simply so densely colorful and moves through its running time with such a whiff of spontaneous unfolding that it whisks you off to a magical parallel world in a heartbeat, provided you know how to give yourself over to the magic of music, of course. Unlike two years ago at the very same venue, when some booze-crowned attendee interrupted Lukather in the middle of an engrossed monologue before one of the songs with »Shaddap and play!«, which riled the artist to the point that he couldn’t function in a relaxed way for the rest of the show (hence some mistakes, too), Luke was spared that this time. So he radiated his full, accessible stage charisma, along with a full dose of his fun manner. »Transition« is a wonderful album – Lukather is proud of it. And the new album once again works superbly live. Luke also showed huge joy over the new studio achievement in his introduction to the new Right the Wrong, where he pointed out that his son Trevor Lukather co-wrote the song (alongside keyboardist CJ Vanston).
This is a concert experience you simply can’t get tired of. Catching a first-rate player like Steve Lukather in an intimate club setting is a one-of-a-kind experience, since this guy is one of the most accomplished and universally (»cross-genre«) defined guitarists in the galaxy. In June it’s the European tour with Toto first, and after that, as mentioned, we’ll see. Let’s hope for an autumn reprise of hanging out with the master of generous ear massage, as he coaxes it out of his famous scratching on that famous »six-string toy«.
Setlist
1. Judgement Day
2. Creep Motel
3. Freedom
4. Song For Jeff
5. Transition
6. Jammin’ With Jesus
7. Darkness In My World
8. Broken Machine
9. The Pump
10. Right The Wrong
11. Hero With a Thousand Eyes
12. Never Enough
—encore I—
13. Flash In The Pan
—encore II—
14. Smile
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