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Peter Rowan & Tony
Rice
With Bryn and Billy Bright
With Special Guests Pam Brandon & Chad Manning
At the Great American Music
Hall
San Francisco, CA, June 22,
2004
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Setlists: Peter Rowan & Tony Rice: Panama Red, The Hobo Song, Your Were There For Me, The Paper Bride of Angel Island, Lay My Lonesome Down, Jerusalem Café, Walls of Time, Cold Rain & Snow, Summertime (Tony & Brynn), Free Mexican Air Force, Come Back to Old Santa Fe, Ride the Wild Mustang, E: Midnight Moonlight, 2nd E: Lonesome Fiddle Blues*, Salt Creek* (* = With Chad Manning on Fiddle) Pam Brandon & Chad Manning: Tear My Still house Down, Arctic Ocean, Roy Rogers, Pretty Polly, Your Cheatin' Heart, Texas Love Song, Coal Not Dole, Cripple Creek, Sugar in My Bowl, Salt Creek, I've Just Seen A Face. According to onstage comments from Peter Rowan, it had been five years since he'd last performed at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall. Tony Rice acknowledged, with an affirming nod that it had been more than 20 years since he'd last appeared at this venerable theater. Interestingly, the Music Hall was ground zero in the development of 'Dawg-Music', the hybrid offspring of string jazz and bluegrass co-developed by Tony Rice with David Grisman & Co. In the ensuing years since the heady days of Old & In The Way and the salad days of Dawg Music both Peter Rowan and Tony Rice have followed their own respective muse as songwriters, instrumentalists and conduits of the hallowed traditions of bluegrass music. Their musical collaboration brought forth a capacity crowd to witness the synergistic possibilities resulting from the combination of perhaps America's finest bluegrass singer songwriters with one of its predominant instrumentalists. Ably abetted by the husband and wife rhythm section of Billy and Bryn Bright, on mandolin and bass, this quartet produced a comforting cross-section of classic chestnuts, brand new material and number of intriguing nuggets from the deep song bag of Peter Rowan. But before the capacity crowd was graced with the presence of this capable quartet singer/guitarist Pam Brandon and fiddler Chad Manning performed a warm and very well-received set. Originally hailing from the Northwest of England*, Pam Brandon has been an active San Francisco based musician for the last dozen years singing Swing and Jazz as D'Lilah Monroe, with the Chazz Cats and leading a bluegrass sextet known as Belle Monroe & Her Brewglass Boys, among her varied musical activities.
Pam & Chad's set showcased a tasteful variety of Americana that embraced bluegrass, blues, and country, swing, fiddle tunes and a smidgeon of the Beatles (with I've Just seen A Face). With confident stage presence, sultry-hued vocals and solid guitar playing Pam kept the audiences attention delivering Gillian Welch's Tear My Still House Down, Hank Williams' Your Cheatin' Heart, and the traditional Jazz classic Sugar In My Bowl, while Chad Manning lifted the music to instrumental heights with exciting fiddle flourishes. The wide variety of music kept the set from losing the crowd and the musical interplay between Pam and Chad was natural and unforced. Toward the end of the set, during the bluegrass standard Salt Creek, Pam played a hot guitar break that showed that she's more than just a great vocal interpreter. It was clear by the set's conclusion that this duo's formidable talents were well represented and that potential for higher profile gigs is in the offing.
Bryn, Peter, Billy and Tony With a quick set change Peter Rowan and Tony Rice, with Billy and Bryn Bright (their nattily-dressed rhythm section) took the stage and were welcomed with wild anticipatory applause. They hit the ground running with a pair of Rowan classics; Panama Red, followed by The Hobo Song. Then with an abrupt turn toward the future the quartet played the title track from their new CD You Were There For Me, which is slated for release summer '04 on Rounder Records. Other highlights of the set included Billy Bright's modal, middle-eastern-sounding instrumental Jerusalem Café, named for an all-night Denver eatery that is a favorite of these touring professionals. Next came the one-two punch of the Rowan-Monroe classic Walls of Time, followed by the traditional classic Cold Rain and Snow. Billy Bright did a great job alternating between a solid chopping rhythm and some surprisingly deft mandolin work, while Bryn Bright showed a confident mastery of the upright bass in combination with beautifully performed close-harmony vocal work which cloaked Peter Rowan's lead vocals like a bedspread over a tightly-made bed.
Much to the delight of the crowd, which was populated by a great number of members of local bluegrass bands, Chad Manning was invited to the stage for the second encore. Vassar Clements classic The Lonesome Fiddle Blues, was given the kind of treatment that leaves audiences screaming for more. Tony Rice uttered a guttural "YEAH!" upon the conclusion of Chad Manning's first fiddle solo, which seemed to suggest that acknowledgment from Rice is warm welcome from the upper echelons of the bluegrass community. Indeed the ecstatic audience managed to urge the band back for a third encore - a tasty, hot-blooded rendering of classic instrumental Salt Creek. This evening's performance showed why Peter Rowan is an American legend. He combines the skills of a consummate showman with material that stands the test of time alongside freshly rendered ideas and skillful delivery. The presence of Tony Rice was icing on this musical cake. His instrumental prowess weaves in and out of Rowan's music, adding jazzy melodic diversions, intriguing suspended inventions and his commanding 'G Run', without ever weighing down Rowan's songs. Billy Bright finds the right rhythmic spaces to fill with his rhythm and is capable of eliciting "wows!" with his subtle but skillful lead breaks, while Bryn Bright's confidence on bass and well-tempered harmony vocal work gives Rowan a wide-open landscape to fill with lyric imagery. Peter Rowan and his cohorts will be touring throughout the balance of 2004. For a lot of bang for the buck, this capable quartet comes highly recommended. * Bury-born / Connah's Quay (North Wales) / Chester
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Editor's note:
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Review and Photos by Ted Silverman ©
2004
Chad
Manning descended upon the San Francisco bluegrass and old-timey music
communities within the past six years and quickly shot through the ranks
to the upper-echelons of the local scene. He has performed as a member of
the East Bay based band Due West and also with the David Grisman
Bluegrass Experience. Chad currrently teaches an ever-increasing number
of fiddle students (including Pam).
Tony Rice earned the crowd's favor with his unique guitar style heavy-laden
with suspended 4th, ninth chords and horn-like runs. Rice complimented the
underlying harmonic construction of Rowan's tunes with a stylistic
improvisational approach that never intruded on the melody. Midway through
the set, in a duet with Bryn Bright, Rice's impressionistic style of riffing
morphed into the gorgeous minor key motif of George Gershwin's
Summertime. One of the most appealing aspects of Rice in this context
was the flowing cascade of notes that concluded those songs he was given
to cap-off. In these contexts the extended fusillade of notes is akin to
that of a sax player given full freedom to express his emotions musically.
Indeed, Rice has covered some of John Coltrane's tunes and has cited Eric
Dolphy as an influence.
Following this distinct musical interlude Peter Rowan returned to the stage
to deliver the ever-evolving story of the Free Mexican Airforce, complete
with it's ganja-inspired subtext, rough-hewn but crusty characters, humorous
quips at our current commander in chief and the ever present twinkle in Peter
Rowan' eyes. Rowan's compositional tendencies are visualizations of the American
West. He employs metaphoric constructs to carry on the principles of traditional
songcraft using the landscape, characters and setting of each song to embed
themes of loss, heartbreak, death and undying love in his music. This is
the enduring strength of his lengthy canon of work. In keeping with this
thematic concept he delivered Come Back to Old Santa Fe, Ride the
Wild Mustang, and one of his most well loved songs, Midnight
Moonlight, with sincerity and heartfelt conviction. The musical underpinnings
provided by the Brights and the flowing, lyrical melodic counterpoint of
Tony Rice's guitar combine to form a sublimely pleasant listening
experience.