Uptown Amphitheater - Raleigh, NC - 9.17.10

The Black Crowes

Raleigh Downtown Amphitheater

Raleigh, North Carolina

September 17, 2010

Acoustic Set

Cold Boy Smile

Under A Mountain

Garden Gate

East Virginia Blues (1st time played)

What Is Home

Ballad In Urgency >              
Wiser Time

Smile

Whoa Mule

Thorn In My Pride

My Morning Song

Electric Set

Halfway To Everywhere

I Ain't Hiding

Twice As Hard

A Conspiracy

Title Song

Downtown Money Waster>
Share The Ride

She Talks To Angels

Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution

Sting Me

-encore-

Oh Sweet Nuthin'

Remedy

There might not be a smoother intro in this band's catalog right now than the music that precedes Cold Boy Smile and the song that follows.  So good.  The sweet sounds of the intro tonight went for a good three minutes and could well have gone on for another five or six and nobody would have minded.  Fine stuff coming from the stage. 

"Nice to see y'all this evening, for us to get together here in
the Raleighwood and share some moonlight"

Words spoken by a man from Georgia who lives in California standing in Raleigh wearing an 'I heart Tulsa' shirt.  Things had started off well...just easy, nice, laid back and comfortable.  Nobody was in a hurry to get anywhere.

A first-time cover of the East Virginia Blues was unveiled next and the good people of North Carolina were thrilled to hear their state name-checked in the first verse.  Luther just doin' the damn thing on the electric mandolin, down home acoustic picking from Rich and a little harmony on the verses of this one had the acoustic set batting 1.000 at this point, going a flush 4-for-4 right out of the gate.  Raleigh had themsleves a good old fashioned hootenanny.  Keeping things going were the really nice middle verses and back end of What Is Home with Luther again laying it down while Adam talked back on the keys during the night's first jam.

A ten-minute Ballad In Urgency followed with some great moments toward the end as Wiser Time came along...and if you will, allow us to spend the next long paragraph talking about Wiser Time from tonight.  We've decided that from here on out, we're not going to call Adam, Luther and Rich's individual parts in Wiser Time "solos" anymore.  From now on we will refer to these moments as personal time.  After Adam had his, Luther either jumped on a surfboard made out of lightning or a hovercraft from the future he had hiding in front of his monitor because he went completely off the reservation for a few minutes.  Virgil turned to Eunice and said, "That there's a skunk tone, a real lip curler."  And he was right; it did sound pretty foul.  There's no photographic evidence to confirm this but somebody else claimed at one point Luther's eyes rolled back up into his head during a simultaneous remote viewing session but our office hasn't been able to confim this.  We'll simply say his personal time was well spent.  Right about then, just as everyone in the crowd ran out of air freshener, Rich came along and it got even nastier.  His first few notes sounded like he was talking with his guitar.  It was like a class demonstration on filfthiness.  Any moment where everyone else steps back and lets Rich go off on a journey of personal time is time well spent for everyone.  It could be during I Ain't Hiding, Oh Sweet Nuthin, the Tied Up and Swallowed breakdown, a Share the Ride jam or Wiser Time..whenever he's pile-driving the train downhill and hits those corners going full-on filfth you have to just stand there and go, "Damn."  Like we've been saying here all tour long...whether or not you're a fan of the "new" Wiser Time, whether you'd be happier than a thief in the vault to hear it every night or if you think it gets played too much, the fact is it gives everyone in the room a chance to watch while these guys just play.  There's a difference between watching Rich play a song straight through, like say Twice As Hard that doesn't veer off course improvisationally or go anywhere exploratory...as opposed to watching him jump off a cliff and not hit the ground.  It's a fun ride, even when it makes your lip curl.

Whatever came next was going to get sucked up in the wake of what just went down, and Smile just happened to be the unassuming victim.  Not many people knew what they were hearing.  Smile was an unfortunate bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Yes, this was the first full-band performance of Smile but it kinda came and went without much excitement.  Maybe the crowd was still getting used to seeing all the paint that peeled off the walls during Rich's playing on Wiser Time; after all this is their brand new downtown Raleigh Amphitheater, recently opened in June of 2010.  Smile was just enough of a breather for everyone by the time Whoa Mule came around that things were rolling  again.  A quick note must be made of how excited some folks get when they see Steve come out front to sit and play the hand drum.  We guarantee that there are grown men out there who would volunteer to carry Steve like Julius Caesar from his kit to the front of the stage to assume controls of the hand drum.  Yes, accompanied by the sound of several deep-voiced "Steeeeeeeve" chants filling the room, the drummer man himself counted off for the opening harmony part of Whoa Mule to commence and the front porch North Carolina hootenanny had returned.

A 12-minute Thorn In My Pride followed and was nothing if not another opportunity for Rich to have more personal time. This time there was aide and extra tar in the form of some back alley funk from Joe on the congas that just about made your lip curl up again.  The question is, when someone is that funky, does the funk enhance the man or does the man enhance the funk?  It's a chicken and egg sort of thing.  We're getting sidetracked.  Just don't overlook Joe and what he's bringing from his spot on stage every night.  And even if Luther fell apart just a tad on his solo coming out of the break, those are real moments and it was fun watching him try to get where he was headed.  Might not have even been the punchiest acoustic Morning Song of the tour afterward but the set as a whole was a winning lottery ticket that everyone got to split. 

There wasn't enough time during set break to head over to Hillsborough Street for a Char-Grill Burger and a chocolate shake but next time you're in Raleigh make sure you hit it up and grab a sack for the road.  A Raleigh institution since 1959, read about them here and try not to drool looking at the pictures.  If you enjoy your meal, please thank Mr. Steve Gorman for name-dropping Char-Grill via the What's Wrong With Steve entry from March 4th, 2010.    

The electric set opened with a 10-minute Halfway To Everywhere > Jam that got everybody moving and turned the evening from front porch hootenanny to a get up get-get down.  Lately we find ourselves looking forward more to the juicy jam on this one than the verses and chorus in the song, just waiting for it, and tonight's version of the Halfway to Everywhere jam started off in Twelfth Dimension Outer Space Funkland. 

It didn't last quite long enough though as Chris came in and began steering the ship toward Luther's solo, which tractor beamed everything back to the mothership before the audio signals were able to reach out beyond the exosphere and get tracked by any Iguanoids out on night patrol.  Conversely, the funk coming from I Ain't Hiding may have reached past the 9th Sector and gone well into the colonized zone beyond Lyra and Gordan  424, but who can really say for sure.  No shapeshifters were seen grooving at the show but then again, going unnoticed is their business and has ensured their survival for centuries so there may have been a few lurking around.  Just be wary next time you're at a show when a funkfest like this breaks out...take a quick glance around at your neighbors mid-funk and make sure nobody is sporting any reptilian skin.  The funk makes 'em break out...and under no circumstances are you to make any eye contact or engage these creatures should you spot one; just be cool and wait until a slow song comes along so you can pretend you have to hit the can. 

But there was no leaving unless you wanted to miss a fun Conspiracy that kept the vibe going with a really nice keyboard section from Adam...then a freak favorite, Title Song, sauntered in before Downtown Money Waster came bouncing along with a piano-driven jam that came to a hiccuping halt and picked back up for some Rich slide work that he may or may not have intended to sound like Lowell George licks.  In any case, Raleigh had a legit Little Feat thing brewing in the air, but not in the form of one of their songs...more in the form of that Lowell sound and feel.  Another melody morphed out of these licks that felt like something you've heard before but can't quite put your finger on.  Great moments a plenty on the jam coming out of Money Waster, which smoothly found its way to Share The Ride and another jam that brought all kinds of great playing, especially Luther on the slide.  Downtown Money Waster > Share The Ride crossed the finish line with a time of 22:15, which was good enough to qualify for regionals later this fall.

She Talks To Angels was next and made a lot of people in the crowd happy.  Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution trailed behind and made us think if Hotel Illness and Could I've Been So Blind ever decided to combine DNA they might produce a hybrid reminiscent of this Warpaint tune.  No word if any members of the NCSDAR were in attendance.  A super rare set-closing Sting Me appeared next and suggested that two shows in a row with late set Sting Me appearances might be the beginning of a trend.  You may think otherwise, but an early set Sting Me is not like a late set Sting Me.  One drives; the other swings.  One is tight; the other is loose.  Listen to them.  It's real.  This truth has existed since 1996 and continues to live on in 2010. 

Tonight's encore consisted of Oh Sweet Nuthin' and Remedy to close out the night, as everyone in Raleigh got to have "one last dance under the light of the moon."  This was no doubt one of the better two set shows so far and you would be wise to grab the BC Roadshow...so click here.  

Some sneaky owners of a cell phone or digital camera were brave enough to roll tape during Oh Sweet Nuthin' and post it online so we'll share it here after some thoughts from a few folks.  Here we go...

Killer show, Rich and Luther are both tearing it up. Chris sounds as good as I can remember since 05-06, just fantastic. One incredible song after another last night

another...

everything was perfect. THe acoustic set was fuckin amazing

another...

An amazing show tonight! Great sets on paper without a doubt, but I have not heard them sound this good since 06. Smile!  Are kidding me(?). Title Song was the best I've ever heard it played (period). Chris' voice was damn near perfect.

and another...

Such a great show last night, probably the best Crowes show I've seen since '06 or '07.  Title Song, Halfway, and 1st full band performance of Smile were incredible.  The band were in top form last night, too; this is the best I've seen this line up play.

And off we go to stop #2 on the 3-night North Carolina run...Charlotte bound...