Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Velden am Wörthersee / Bluesiana Rock Cafe / Austria
Concert date: 01.04.2015
Attendance: 60
Ticket price: €32.00 (advance) / €37.00 (day of the show)
On April Fools’ Day, three out-of-this-world musical virtuosos stopped by the revived Bluesiana. Over rich careers, they’ve left their mark on countless top-notch albums by all kinds of artists, especially the eclectic ones. From pop to metal and experimental rock (in opposition), and everything in between. From Michael Jackson to Frank Zappa. And everything in between.
Jennifer Batten (guitar), Stu Hamm (bass) and Chad Wackermann (drums). It would have been a sin to miss a concert treat like this. Jennifer Batten already played Bluesiana on 29.11.2013, exactly on her 56th birthday. Back then they baked her a giant cake shaped like a Fender Stratocaster, and the whole of Bluesiana was smearing themselves with it well into the night after her show. Jenny has also played Ljubljana, as part of a guitar clinic, and we’ve had a visit from Stu Hamm too, as part of his bass clinic in 2008 at Orto bar, and as part of Joe Satriani’s touring band, where we saw him in June 2008 on the stages of Codroipo near Udine in Italy. And Chad Wackermann? The guy who put his name on the albums and concert tours of Frank Zappa, Allan Holdsworth, Albert Lee, Steve Vai, Andy Summers (The Police), to name just a few, didn’t make it to Bluesiana this time. Instead, a few minutes past eight, a guy with a short, neatly kept haircut, definitely beefy and whale-like, almost wider than he was tall, walked in single file behind Batten and Hamm toward the stage. That was none other than British drummer Greg Blundell. Here’s yet another top-class drummer with devilishly polished and refined technique, who in his career has worked with David Cross (King Crimson) and drums for the bands Frost* and Pendragon, and who recently got a call from Steven Wilson himself, asking if he could jump in and help out on the tour promoting his new album »Hand Cannot Erase«, since his drummer Marco Minnemann has other commitments in May 2015 and won’t be able to stay on as drummer through the end of Wilson’s tour. In short: Blundell is an extremely highly regarded drummer. A top-tier, all-around virtuoso. And we must not forget the fourth musician who played with the trio that night: excellent Italian guitarist Nazzareno Zacconi, who already helped Jennifer Batten on stage two years ago when she played Bluesiana.
The band opened the show with a Jennifer Batten solo piece called Ya Ain’t Nothing Like A Fast Car. Right from the start it was clear who was in charge on stage. Jenny cranked her guitar up quite a bit more than Nazzareno did, and she soloed through a much sharper, more finely honed and more heavily distorted tone. Welcome to the crossfire of countless solo acrobatics with no end in sight. With just the second song, the band touched on Michael Jackson’s repertoire, playing his song Scream, which the King of Pop once performed together with his sister Janet. Of course, in a much faster and more jam-packed take, as a hard-hitting experimental instrumental, where Stu Hamm’s slapping fit in great with the funk flavor. A shorter number called Lone Star went to Stu Hamm, who built a great prelude over a reggae rhythm framework, the surprise of the night. Then came a cover of Weather Report, which Jennifer announced with the line: »We’re gonna hit you with some Weather Report!«. It was a performance of Black Marker, where the quartet also showed off its softer, more subtle side.
Alongside Jennifer Batten’s breakneck escapades, the versatile Nazzareno Zacchoni also shone this time around. He flat-out stunned a few times with his brilliance, and he also got a longer solo spot where he showed off his mastery of the acoustic guitar.
The energy in the room was unbelievable, with some 60 heads gathered. With players of this caliber and the way they executed the material, there’s no way to stay indifferent. Greg Blundell, who jumped into the lineup at the last minute mid-tour, because Wackermann had to fly across the Atlantic right away (reportedly his wife fell ill), showed in his solo spot, right at the end of the concert, just how refined a drummer he is. His solo kept entertaining with its content, and Blundell delivered it so that the atmosphere built up gradually from moment to moment toward the closing crescendo. In his solo spot, Hamm actually went through a similar sequence of songs as in Ljubljana in 2008. He opened with one of his reworkings of a classic, continued with the song Nostalgia, and then flowed that into an instrumental version of the Led Zeppelin classic Going To California. At the very end, the quartet also played a hard-hitting version of the Nirvana hit Smells Like Teen Spirit, and closed the concert with a hurricane blues jam on the blues classic Fannie Mae, written by Buster Brown in 1959. Stu Hamm instantly morphed into Jaco Pastorius once more, while Jennifer, who adorned her solos throughout with generous use of the tremolo arm, and Nazzareno kept unleashing relentless bursts of breathtaking solo escapades. Among the most interesting moments of the show, it’s worth highlighting the performance of Freeway Jam, originally by Jeff Beck, with whom Jennifer Batten also “clocked in” for a while.
Two hours flew by in the blink of an eye. Playing that stuns, tailor-made for the most demanding music gourmets, that keeps thrilling with its free-form breaking of genre frameworks, and with an extremely subtle and sensible adaptation of the arrangements of some of the most interesting songs ever written in the story of rock’n’roll. Another experience full of musical brilliance. In the musical sanctuary called Bluesiana.
Setlist
1. Ya Ain’t Nothing Like A Fast Car
2. Scream (orig. Michael Jackson
3. Lone Star
4. Black Market (orig. Weather Report)
5. Elephant Stomp
6. Radio Free
7. Off the Deep End
8. Bass guitar solo (Stu Hamm)
9. Guitar solo (Nazzareno Zacchoni)
10. The Obligatory Boogie
11. In the Aftermath
12. Freeway Jamm (orig. Jeff Beck)
13. Drum solo (Greg Blundell)
14. Smells Like Teen Spirit (orig. Nirvana)
—encore—
15. Fannie Mae (orig. Buster Brown)
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