by Keith Spera, Music writer, The Times-Picayune
Sunday August 10, 2008, 11:51 AM
Still doubt music’s ability to supersede all barriers and boundaries? Consider the scene at a nearly full New Orleans Arena on Friday night.
During a set by Lynyrd Skynyrd, the penultimate Southern rock band, thousands cheered the Confederate flag displayed during “Sweet Home Alabama.” Two hours later, those same fans waved their hands in the air like they just didn’t care as Kid Rock — who owes equal debts to Johnny Cash and Grandmaster Flash — and Joseph “Rev Run” Simmons led an ecstatic sing-along on Run-DMC’s rap classic “It’s Tricky.”
Friday’s show launched the “Rock ‘n Rebels” tour with Rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rev Run and Back Door Slam. For this outing, Rock stripped away the strippers, fireworks and extended forays into classic rock cover songs. Instead he emphasized his 11-piece Twisted Brown Trucker band and ever-growing, ever maturing catalog. They held their own without the bells and whistles.
Rock’s sense of humor preceded him to the stage. As the lights dimmed, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” blasted from the speakers — only to cut off just as it did during the final episode of “The Sopranos.” In an opening video, a bodyguard searched for Rock in a Waffle House — the setting for a 2007 fight that led to the singer’s arrest.
Clad all in white save a black hat, an animated Rock bounded to the tip of a cross-shaped runway and threw himself into the task at hand. In the set’s early going, that consisted of defining himself: He is a “Rock ‘n Roll Jesus,” as the title track of his latest album asserts. He is an “American Badass” and a “Lowlife.” He is “Cocky.”
With that, the ensemble abruptly switched gears for “All Summer Long,” the harmony- and acoustic guitar-laden summer anthem that borrows from Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.” The song might have fit more comfortably elsewhere in the set.
The show peaked early with “Amen,” a gospel-tinged statement of the times from “Rock ‘n Roll Jesus.” As Rock sang of natural disasters, images from Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath flashed on video screens; the audience cheered. Rock instructed all in attendance to high-five someone they didn’t know. What followed was the rock ‘n roll equivalent of the peace offering in church; it was goofy, awkward, funny and brilliant, as neighborly a moment as I’ve ever experienced at an arena show. At this point, Rock could do no wrong.
Such a peak couldn’t be sustained. A low-key “Cowboy” detoured into a cover of the “Dukes of Hazzard” theme, only to swing back into a fully amped up “Cowboy.” Rock strummed an acoustic for a profane country cover and his own honky-tonk kiss-off “Half Your Age,” refitted with an obscene variation told from drummer Stefanie Eulinberg’s point of view.
That Rock is a more than adequate rapper was apparent during Rev Run’s 20 minute guest turn. He traded lines with Run on “You Be Illin” and channeled Steven Tyler in the rap-rock marriage “Walk This Way.” Rock also took a turn on the turntables and banged out fellow Detroit rocker Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” on drums and guitar. “So Hott,” a grinding, guitar-heavy clunker, followed by a screaming “Bawitdaba,” made for an anticlimactic climax.
Rock returned to thank his buddy Sidney Torres, locally famous as the telegenic proprietor of SDT Waste & Debris, for playing host during Rock’s Big Easy visit. Then he led the band through “New Orleans,” with the Rebirth Brass Band providing counterpoint. “New Orleans” is a relatively obscure cut on “Rock ‘n Roll Jesus”; much of the audience seemed unfamiliar with it. But Rock’s affection for the city, and ongoing evolution as an artist, were apparent.
The original Lynyrd Skynyrd is, for me, forever frozen in time as a band of boozing, brawling Southern long-hairs of the 1970s. So there is a disconnect with the spiffed up contemporary version.
Among the great American rock bands, Skynyrd is also one of rock’s great tragedies. Days after the 1977 release of “Street Survivors,” the album that solidified Skynyrd’s standing as a commercial and creative powerhouse, the band’s chartered plane crashed in Mississippi en route to a show in Baton Rouge. Six members of the entourage, including vocalist and primary songwriter Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines, died.
Through a twist of fate, kinetic energy and physics, guitarist Gary Rossington and keyboardist Billy Powell, among others, survived. In 1987, they revived the band for what was initially billed as a one-off tribute tour, with Ronnie’s younger brother Johnny singing songs that still endure on rock radio.
Two decades after that tribute tour, Lynyrd Skynyrd 2.0 continues to do big business on the road. By now, Johnny has fronted Skynyrd much longer than Ronnie, but audiences still demand the classic songs from Ronnie’s era.
And so Skynyrd’s hour-and-15 minute set Friday consisted almost entirely of material that is more than three decades old. “He sounds the same as he did 30 years ago,” slurred the guy next to me, who seemed not to comprehend as I tried to explain this wasn’t the Van Zant who wrote and initially sang these songs.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Drummer Michael Cartellone can push the material too aggressively — he lacks the subtle swing of former Skynyrd drummers Bob Burns and Artimus Pyle. But otherwise Powell, Rossington and their current cohorts — all sport shoulder-length locks worthy of the 1970s — ride the old warhorses well.
Powell’s piano stamped the roadhouse boogie-woogie in “What’s Your Name,” “Gimme Three Steps” and “Call Me the Breeze.” Guitarist Rickey Medlocke, a veteran of Southern rock brothers-in-arms Blackfoot, carried much of the guitar solo load. He traded vocal lines with Van Zant on “You Got That Right.”
“Been there, done that, ain’t never going back again,” Van Zant said by way of introduction to “That Smell,” an oft-misinterpreted warning about the evils of substance abuse. Video images of American troops served as the backdrop to “Simple Man.” They ditched the medley deployed during the “Rowdy Frynyds” tour with Hank Williams Jr. last year and instead left many classics unplayed.
For the final “Freebird,” Rossington stepped to the front of the stage and traced the anthem’s moaning slide guitar signature. A dozen names and photos from Skynyrd’s past flashed on the screen behind him. The full ensemble slammed “Freebird” home, the Lynyrd Skynyrd that is saluting the Lynyrd Skynyrd that was.
Blues-rock trio Back Door Slam made the most of their five-song, 30 minute opening set. I first encountered the young ensemble from the Isle of Man at their American debut, a gig at a Sixth Street Irish pub in March 2007 during the South By Southwest Music Conference in Austin. They have been on the road ever since, grinding out the sort of grueling campaign best undertaken by hungry young musicians barely in their 20s.
Plopped down at the front of the massive Skynyrd/Rock stage with a bare-bones drum kit, Back Door Slam looked like a high school band at a talent contest. Guitarist/vocalist Davy Knowles and his bandmates have much to learn about playing the big rooms and the big stages. Bassist Adam Jones moved little other than his hands, and Knowles — in jeans, a T-shirt and tennis shoes — stuck close to his microphone. They are the antithesis of pop pomp and circumstance, a throwback to a time when musicians showed up, plugged in and wailed.
And wail they did. Knowles boasts a grit in his voice that is well beyond his years, and the glorious scream of his guitar cut through the din of the vast arena. Songs from Back Door Slam’s 2007 debut, “Roll Away,” served as launching pads for solos of the Guy/Clapton/Vaughan variety. He made judicious use of a wah-wah pedal as he sculpted hearty lead lines, the sort that stand on their own and speak to a deep commitment to, and natural feel for, the music and its history.
Armed with such musicianship, flash is not necessary.
