Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Local Bar / Vienna / Austria
Concert date: June 18, 2011
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: €10.00
This concert adventure in Vienna was also planned at the very last minute, thanks to news spreading at lightning speed over Facebook. The frontman of classic hard rock outfit Winger, who rocketed to the very top of the charts with hits from their first two albums “Winger” (1988) and “In The Heart Of The Young” (1990): Kip Winger! All by his lonesome, in the tiny Local Bar club in the middle of Vienna. This April Kip recorded the track “End Of Time” with excellent Austrian guitarist Milan Polak for the combined album of the Embrace The Sun project. It’s a charity release put out by Lion Music Records, with proceeds going to the victims of the recent disasters in Japan.
The bond between the two friends stuck, and it just so happened that Kip came through Austria on business, since these days he’s busy with classical music. This year saw the release of the suite for the ballet “Ghosts”, with the mini EP and the music written by Kip Winger himself. During the week he spent in Austria on business, he still managed to strike a deal for a small club “jam” with Milan Polak and guitarist Lenny Dickson.
The trio hadn’t run through even five minutes of the repertoire at any rehearsal beforehand. Plain and simple. They had a mere 14 days to study the material, get together for one show, and play it with as few mistakes as possible, or none. Thrilling stuff: combining, adapting, improvising. That’s exactly what gives the music world its special spark.
Nine in the evening. Kip Winger, who had been wandering around the club long before that and chatting with music fans, stepped on stage and greeted the crowd. In his address, which showed that German isn’t entirely foreign to him either, he explained the situation he’d landed in to the assembled crowd and announced that tonight’s gig would be more or less a “jam session”. So he wished everyone plenty of fun moments.
And sure enough, the first song kicked in. No better choice. A hard rock version of the Beatles classic Helter Skelter. It instantly set up great energy in the room. It confirmed the excellent acoustics of the space and a well-balanced sound in the club. It was also clear that Kip’s voice has kept its expressive power and the incisiveness of his stage performance to this day. It’s well known that Kip played on Cooper’s albums “Raise Your Fist And Yell” and “Constrictor”. In memory of those days, Cooper’s classic School’s Out rang out through the room, while with Hendrix’s Foxy Lady the trio got the crowd moving to the absolute limit, and the crowd was well and truly soaked in all that positive rock energy.
A surprise followed when Kip and company launched into the first track off Winger’s new album “Karma” (2009), called Deal With The Devil, which sounded utterly phenomenal. There’d have been nothing wrong with the trio sticking to Winger songs all night.
The trio also prepared an acoustic part for the audience. They started with the Beatles classic Let It Be, then Another Way, a Miles Away offshoot from Kip’s solo album of acoustic reworkings, “Down Incognito”. As a big surprise, the guys also played the Winger song Down Incognito from the album “Pull”, naturally in an acoustic manner, just as it’s known from the aforementioned solo studio album of Kip’s.
In the second half Kip invited two more companions on stage. First the trio grew into a quartet with a pianist, and Kip tackled the Beatles classic Oh Darling. An excellent performance. Not a single complaint. Kip Winger’s voice has that velvety quality, warmth and fullness. It’s dosed with varying degrees of grit whenever the need arises. Kip articulates his vocals with seasoned skill and is totally convincing in conveying emotion. A hardened old fox with extraordinary self-confidence. The trio had a ridiculously good time on stage and carried everyone present off to a completely different world for an hour and a half, where you suddenly forgot all the troubles of everyday life. As the fifth member, another friend of Kip’s joined them on stage. Paolo, an Italian clarinetist and singer, who warned the crowd that the band was about to take on Gershwin’s classic Summertime and that we should count it as a mitigating circumstance that he’d be forced to sing it in an Italian accent. Gershwin isn’t actually an unusual move for Kip, since it’s well known that Kip Winger comes from a family in which both parents were jazz musicians.
Things got rocking again when the band tackled Hendrix’s Purple Haze and the Zeppelin standard Rock N’ Roll. They wrapped up the regular set with the eagerly awaited Winger classic Seventeen. All the big fun came to a close with the obligatory encore and the ZZ Top staple Tush.
Milan Polak is a guitarist who toured in the past with the late Austrian hitmaker and pop icon Falco. He “taped” everything there was to “tape”. Lightning-fast in his solos, and also hugely resourceful and witty as the leader of the guitar theater. Still, it stood out to both the ears and the eyes that in the spots where the legacy of blues eroticism really sparks, Polak wasn’t as inventive or impressive, since he took refuge in a sea of fired-off notes in his “shredding”, which, in Hendrix’s song for example, pulled it away from its essence.
In principle the trio played through the entire repertoire brilliantly, especially considering they didn’t need a single joint rehearsal for it. At certain points it wasn’t hard to notice that, say, Lenny Dickson wasn’t hitting 100% of the standards. In the Zep classic Rock N’ Roll, for instance, he didn’t nail the more demanding transitional parts, especially the one in the outro of the song. Otherwise, though, confident throughout.
In a later chat Kip confirmed that Winger are coming to Europe on tour this fall, or rather as soon as Reb Beach finishes his obligations to Whitesnake and the promotion of their new studio album “Forevermore”. Kip obviously misses his Winger buddy a lot, since he asked us whether anyone might happen to catch Reb at any of the Whitesnake shows on their current European tour.
The Kip Winger concert with Milan Polak and Lenny Dickson was an especially rewarding visit for all the true Winger fans and lovers of Kip Winger’s vocal interpretation itself. It confirmed the musician’s excellent form and well-oiled chops, as he radiated exceptionally positive energy and good spirits all evening. You could feel that this is the kind of therapy that gives Kip an absolute measure of relaxation and, well, why hide it, an enviable little paycheck with a lovely jingle.
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
1. Helter Skelter 2. School’s Out 3. Foxy Lady 4. Deal With The Devil 5. You Really Got Me 6. Let It Be 7. Another Way 8. Down Incognito 9. How Far Will We Go 10. Oh Darling 11. Summertime 12. Purple Haze 13. Rock N’ Roll 14. Seventeen 15. Tush
Photo Gallery
