ROARING FORK BROADCASTING COMPANY
Lukas Nelson kicked off the 2024 Jazz Aspen Labor Day Experience early Friday evening backed by his longtime band Promise of the Real.
On May 5, it was announced on lukasnelson.com that Nelson and the band were going on hiatus. The show on Friday was one of the last shows of the band’s current tour — and the end of the road, for the foreseeable future, for Nelson and POTR.
Friday’s set felt a little bit as if Nelson had already moved on. The band didn’t get after it with dirty rock ’n’ roll like they have for the last 15 years.
Nelson wasn't dressed like an outlaw with his signature long hair. Instead, he had cut his locks and eschewed the outlaw attire for short hair (seemingly black), a black jacket and a black sombrero.
The set was decidedly mid-tempo, except for the longtime staple at the end of the show, “Gimme Something Real.”
It was a little disorienting for longtime POTR fans, kind of like being a lover of vanilla ice cream and when you take a bite it tastes like chocolate. They’re both really good, but you were expecting vanilla.
I recently interviewed Lukas and it became clear that he wants to focus on his solo career and songwriting.
A day before the festival, Neil Young announced that he was finished playing with his longtime backing band Crazy Horse, and plans to tour with Promise of the Real (with whom he toured from 2014-20).
This is pure conjecture, but having followed the situation very closely, it seems entirely possible that Young came to the Promise of the Real with an offer to them to be his backup band. Nelson, wanting to concentrate on songwriting, bowed out and POTR signed on to play with Young, who would bring Micah Nelson (Lukas’ brother) with him from Crazy Horse.
The other scenario is that Young heard about the POTR hiatus and approached them (sans Nelson) about being his band and they accepted.
However, it went down, when Young is done touring in the next five years, POTR and Nelson can address their future at that time.
Friday’s show felt a little like Nelson was dipping his black sombrero into his musical future, more mellow, more focused on the songs and less on rock.
All that said, I enjoyed the “Lukas Nelson 2.0 set” tremendously. I’ve been following the band almost since the beginning (2010) and I love the catalog. He played POTR standards like “Georgia,” “Set Me Down on a Cloud,” “Find Yourself” and his dad’s songs like “Angel Flying Too Close To the Ground.” (In case you don’t know, Lukas is the son of outlaw country legend Willie Nelson.)
Nelson also played a cover of Pearl Jam’s “Just Breathe,” a song he recorded with his father. (A quick anecdote: When I interviewed Lukas Nelson I asked him what was the best piece of advice Willie ever gave him. His response, “Just breathe.”)
I hope Lukas Nelson finds himself when he’s out on his own.
If you polled attendees after the Brandi Carlisle show on the question of whether she exceeded their expectations or not, you probably would have gotten an 80-90% “yes” on the query.
She certainly exceeded mine. When she came out with an acoustic trio, I was disappointed. The last time I saw Carlisle (Telluride Bluegrass Festival 2019), she played electric and absolutely rocked.
She was joined onstage by her longtime bandmates Tim and Phil Hanseroth, who are twins (and whom Carlisle refers to as “the twins”).
Carlisle engaged the audience with stories and numerous compliments on how great they were. It felt genuine.
Carlisle opened the show with “Follow,” the first song she ever wrote. She told an amusing story about growing up with an alcoholic father that preceded the song “That Wasn’t Me,” which she played on piano.
Another cool song was “In the Canyon Haze,” a reimagined version of another song she wrote, “In These Silent Days.” Indeed, Carlisle did an entire album in which she put a “Laurel Canyon” music vibe on the songs from her album “In These Silent Days.”
Continuing on with the “vibe” concept, Carlisle told a story about how much she loved Joni Mitchell and explained that she wrote a song with an intentional “Joni Mitchell vibe” called “You and Me on the Rock.” She went to Mitchell’s house to play it for her, and Mitchell’s comment was “sounds like a hit.”
Carlisle then covered Mitchell herself by playing “Carey.” On the covers front, she finished the show with two covers: Queen's “Fat Bottom Girls” and the greatest version of Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California” I’ve ever heard.
Carlisle played her breakout song “The Joke,” a tune about being denigrated, insulted and kicked while you’re down. It is simultaneously a song about perseverance and overcoming obstacles. She conveys these victories with five simple words, repeated twice in the song, “The joke is on them.”
“The Joke” is an LGBTQ+ anthem that transcends sexuality and gender and speaks to everyone who has ever been told that their place is in the middle by someone who hates the way they shine. It’s beautiful, poignant and the chord changes are divine; Carlisle’s vocal performance is defiance incarnate, the melody is undeniable. It is simply one of the greatest songs of the last 24 years (i.e. 21st century) and getting to see her perform it live was and always is an honor.
Thank you Brandi. My expectations were well-exceeded.
I came in at the end of Michael Marcagi’s opening set Saturday afternoon and caught his song “Scared to Start,” which made me wish I had caught the rest of it. It’s a fantastic song.
I did catch the whole set by “OneRepublic. I really enjoyed the performance of “Counting Stars,” a fantastic pop song that has garnered 2.5 billion streams on Spotify and as many on YouTube.
I liked the band’s intention. They played hard. They were into it. That said, it’s just not my kind of music. I could write all kinds of snarky things about the music and what I didn’t like about it, but I won’t.
Here’s what I will say, I rode the bus home to Aspen after the show (the bus transportation was quite efficient) with some Aspen High School students aboard. When I asked them what their favorite band was, all three simultaneously and enthusiastically responded, “OneRepublic!” Turns out, it’s their kind of music.
Sting was up next. One of the most extraordinary things about The Police is that the band’s recording career lasted around five years. They recorded their first album “Outlandos d'Amour" in 1978 and their last album “Synchronicity” in 1983.
Only a few bands/artists have left as big an imprint on rock ’n’ roll in such a short time. Think Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana and Derek and the Dominos.
Sting has essentially been a solo artist for almost 40 years. Saturday night’s show was roughly 60% to 70% tunes from Sting’s days with The Police and based upon the amount of enthusiastic “ay-ohs” the audience threw back at him, no one seemed to mind.
Sting had a three-piece band, the same configuration as the Police. He was joined by longtime collaborator Dominic Miller on guitar and drummer Chris Maas.
The band treated the crowd to the following Police tunes: “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic,” “King of Pain,” “Message in a Bottle,” “Driven to Tears,” “Can’t Stand Losing You,” “Walking on the Moon,” Feel So Lonely” and “Roxanne.”
I had forgotten about some of the incredible lines in the song “King of Pain,” such as, “There's a blind man looking for a shadow of a doubt.”
One of the reasons seeing Sting is so great is that The Police are incredibly underplayed. You rarely hear their music in bars, on the radio or out and about. If you do, it’s “Every Breath You Take,” “Roxanne” or “Message In A Bottle.” It’s incredibly exhilarating to hear “Feel So Lonely” and “Walking on The Moon.”
The husband and wife duo of Michael and Tanya Trotter, known as The War and Treaty, launched Sunday’s third and last day of music out of a cannon with a smoking version of “Proud Mary.”
They pulled a relatively surprising move and played their song “Hey Driver” next. This is the song Zach Bryan put on his eponymous 2023 release that has amassed 270 million spins on Spotify. One would think that it would have been an encore, but they rewarded the early arrivers with a stirring version of the song.
I’ve not seen two singers perform that look so genuinely in love as the Trotters. The War and Treaty played several love songs and an equal amount of rockers.
Covers included Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come,” Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” and Otis Redding’s “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.”
They finished with their anthem “Five More Minutes To Love.” All in all, the set was like going to church, as close to a religious experience as I’ve had at a concert in years.
Editor’s note: Geoff’s take on The Black Crowes and Dierks Bentley was unavailable due to the press deadline.