A dedicated Dana Fuchs had more audience but Ronnie Baker Brooks put the musical level and the black soul in the festival premiere
Taking over from the terminated Getxo Blues and its brother from Hondarribia, the also town hall Bilbao Blues Festival had a wonderful opening session last night both for the atmosphere and for the musical rennet of its first triad of concerts. At the evening event, the Bilbao band Micky and The Buzz opened with their new line-up revamped with double bass and sax. He already showed his packaging in the recent BBK Music Legends, by managing genuine rock and roll, border via Los Lohos (which they adapt) or Italian, appealing to the origin of his charismatic vocalist Micky Paiano who always conquers the staff with his ‘Una Fetta Say Lemon’
Then the mature audience that blues appeals to attend and enjoy the great set of Ronnie Baker Blues increased. We are dealing with a musician, singer with a soulful edge and guitarist with blues credentials and the electric genetics of his native Chicago and assimilated early from his father, the influential Texas and Chicago blues star, Lonnie Brooks, whom he accompanied for more than 19 years. of a decade.
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At 48 years old, Ronnie is a well-known musician on the scene, but not so much by local fans because he hasn’t been lavished on these lands and hadn’t recorded for a decade. So it was a very pleasant surprise the concert he gave at the start of the Bilbao Blues, accompanied by an excellent trio of musicians, a solid ebony rhythm base with veteran left-handed bass player and the great pale-faced keyboardist Daryl Coutts. His improvisations on the Hammond organ or the electric piano, with a church point or New Orleans shuffle cadence, provided a great counterpoint to Ronnie’s solos, more flamboyant and refined than virtuoso or burdensome, with which he lengthened his songs, sometimes throwing reverb and wah wah.
Brooks Jr adjusted to the musical approach of his first album in a decade, Times Have Changed, recorded with much of the musical royalty tied to the Stax label. Connecting Chicago electric blues with Memphis soul and funk, Ronnie injected soul into his guitar on songs like that disarming ‘Give me your love’ recorded with Angie Strone or ‘I got the blues’ that had a soul funk tone in plan Gary Clarke Jr playing with the ‘Hi Rhythm Section’ from Memphis.
A ‘Give me your heart’ with boogie and more shuffle between Orleans and Jamaican, like Fats Domino playing Theophilus Beckford from ‘Easy Snappin’ was perhaps the music lover’s peak of his set, which led to a sentimental ballad dedicated to the women present ‘ See you hurt no more’ very reminiscent of Al Green. The southern blues trotter from ‘I had my chance’ gave way to the revision of the collective album ‘Chicago Plays Stones’ (shared in 2018 with Buddy Guy, Billy Brach, Jimmy Burns or Billy Boy Arnold) from which he rescued his bluesy version of ‘ Satisfaction’ , which was perhaps the least good part of his set «Jagger and Richards asked us to please stop there», he joked before attacking the biographical southern boogie blues ‘Born in Chicago’ which, recalling the three important things of the life (the blues, a woman and money) evoked to some Robert Johnson’s classic ‘Sweet home Chicago’ adapted by the Blues Brothers. A long instrumental intro with the spiritual emotion of gospel and the finesse of BB King culminated in more than 15 mesmerizing minutes in ‘Stuck on You’, dilated with hubbub with Ronnie improvising on guitar among the audience near the park.
With a brilliant counterpoint to the Hammond, ‘Let Me Love You Baby’ sounded more like ZZ Top than its author Buddy Guy, before a great final stretch that appealed to dancing with a celebrated version of ‘Miss You’ by the Stones which, in a vein disco funk via Stax, he fused with Otis Rush’s ‘I Can quit’ between appointments to Koko Taylor, Albert Collins, BB King or his father Lonnie Brooks. A personal review of the ‘Roadhouse Blues’ (Doors) awarded as a pin left the staff so delighted that some sent Ronnie off with an unanswerable Amen!!!
janis shadow
Favored by the nightlife and more public (and tourists), the dark-skinned New York singer and actress Dana Fuachs (New Jersey 1976) burst in, waving her curly hair. As in her passage through Getxo almost a decade ago, her initial dedication was so great that, without stopping dancing, shaking or leaning on her knees, she came to seem hyper-motivated in her efforts to speak broken Spanish. She cajoled, lectured and cheered the audience on, demonstrating her good throat capable of Janis Joplin screeching, to which she is often compared. No wonder she got to star in the musical ‘Love, Janis’. Her torrential Dana spread so much, introducing and lengthening her songs or raising her staff with her tambourine, that she barely sang 13 songs in the slightly more than 120 minutes that her last concert of her European tour lasted.
As she herself recalled, her roots are bluesy. In fact, she is usually associated with other white singers (and guitarists) such as Samantha Fish, Larkin Poe or those known for these payments Laura Cox, Joanna Connor or Ana Popovic. But more than gender, her direct was largely more rock (blues), according to the nineties feminine ideology of Sheryl Crow or even Joan Osborne or Alanis. To the point that she grew up and got much better at versions of her and quotes from Otis Redding, Bobby Bland, Esther Phillips and even Queen.
In the first instance, Dana opted for the rawness of her latest revisionist work of southern rock roots ‘Borrowed time’. Always heavily supported by the solvent lead guitar of the ex and music director John Diamond, Fusch started very much in Janis’s vein with ‘Ready to Rise’ with which she already asked her staff for backing vocals.
The rain threatened ‘Double Down On Wrong’, which sounded like the Stones rocking out with Bonnie Raitt as did ‘Hard Road’. Sitting at the brush drawer, she administered boogie blues and rock with a very JL Hooker coda on ‘Handful to many’ and a long spiel about meditation and the important things in life she learned from a Buddhist monk weighed down ‘Sittin On’ .
Sitting on the edge of the stage, she sang with sincere affectation the ballad of love and faith dedicated to her father ‘Faithful Sinner’. The ostensible improvement was confirmed when Dana pulled versions like Otis Redding’s ‘Aint No Body’s Fault’ recreated with John Diamond’s funk rocky guitar emphasis (or John Boy as her ex calls him in a scene.
The tributes and the elevated and funky tone continued with ‘I smell trouble’, recreated by Ike & Tina. Bobby Bland and a deep bass intro gave way to a lengthy recreation of Gil Scott‐Heron’s brilliant ‘Home Is Where the Hatred Is’, adapted by Esther Phillips. Dana even recommended listening to her sublime album ‘From a whisper to a scream’ (72) almost as a duty before dramatizing on her knees the conscientious lyrics of the song that she dedicated to her brother and sister, both died from overdose
The high point of the evening lasted with the country and southern ‘Sedative’, part time nominated for the Grammy that is his best own song and that Fuchs spoiled something with an extemporaneous ‘No more war’ that prompted to chant Beer in hand . He appealed to celebrate ‘life and the here and now’ in ‘Long Long Road’ evoking a country Sheryl crow to culminate with a much celebrated rock revision of ‘Under Pressure’, by Queen evoking the vocal games of Freddie Mercury and Bowie and appealing to «Give love and send something to my country that is suffering so much violence». Dana once again chose to delay the song in response to the response from the fans, who insistently asked for an encore. The motivated singer delivered by picking up the acoustic to recall her country roots and present a song about a relationship based only on sex that turned out to be the very cowboy ‘I’m Thinking ‘Bout You, (But I’ve Got Nothin ‘ On My Mind)’. It was a canonical finishing touch for the opening of a festival that will give more scope to women with the presence on Sunday of Shemekia Copeland and today’s morning talk (11:00 am) at the Guggenheim Museum Auditorium ‘Divas and Fighters. The woman in the history of the blues’.