reCAP :: Anders Osborne w/ American Babies :: 2016.02.26
An Anders Osborne show is a highly emotional affair: a thick, heated tension between torment and relief. His songs run the gamut from wrenching despair to regretful reflection, hopeful look-ahead and even rakish playfulness. And if he remains songs-first in his approach to composing sets, he also thrives on guitar-sorcery jams, indulging his improvisational chops and never hurrying to a conclusion if a jam demands a slow build, escalating pressure like rising water against a shaky dam. You leave a good Anders show exhausted, as we did this night -- you're invited into the roiling core of these songs and maybe you return cheered, and maybe you return blown out.
Anders' latest album, Spacedust & Ocean Views, contains a number of songs about places -- snatches of memory and of time that are described by their narrator panoramically. It was these songs -- the charged-up boogie of "Lafayette" and the gorgeous, wistful "Pontchartrain" stood out -- that studded his two-hour headlining Cap set, along with a range of tunes from throughout his deep catalog. It was a varied set, bookended by the big guitar jams -- "Five Bullets" and "Pleasin' You" to start, "Windows" and "On the Road to Charlie Parker" -- with lots of other flavors explored throughout. Save for the reliably sturdy Carl Dufresne on bass, Anders keeps his touring band a rotating cast, and this tour's installment includes drummer Brady Blade, keyboardist Danny Eisenberg, and, in the guitar foil slot, the great Eric McFadden, whose dirtied-up tone can err sweet or metallic depending on how he appears to be feeling the song.
Osborne and McFadden were alone onstage as a duo of acoustic guitar and mandolin for "Coming Down" and the sadly soulful "Me & Lola," a quiet, folksy interlude in the midst of so much blues-rock intensity. It was yet another highlight among many, but nothing was quite able to top the searing run through Anders' "Back on Dumaine" -- a rollicking, nostalgia-tinged rocker that in style and tone suggests the middle of the Van Morrison-Grateful Dead Venn diagram -- and then an expert segue into an actual Grateful Dead song, "Bertha," which added guitarist Tom Hamilton and included a three-way guitar blowout.
Hamilton, fresh from the most recent Joe Russo's Almost Dead tour, and who'd opened the show with his ever-more-exciting American Babies band, stuck around along with American Babies drummer Al Smith for an almost-as-potent take on Dylan's "Masters of War."
This was, as Anders noted, his first time headlining The Capitol Theater. It won't be his last -- each stage of a career that's well into its third decade suggests that age is deepening his songwriting and making his performances that much more well-rounded. He's a treasure -- the Neil Young of the modern jam scene -- now more than ever.
Set: Five Bullets, Pleasin' You, Big Talk, Lafayette, Back on Dumaine > Bertha*, Masters of War*#, Pontchartrain, Coming Down**, Me & Lola**, Windows, On the Road to Charlie Parker
Encore: Boxes Bills and Pain, It's Gonna Be OK
* w/Tom Hamilton, guitar
# w/Al Smith, drums; Brady on percussion
** Anders and Eric McFadden duo, guitar and mandolin