So it was with heavy hearts that Mark and I went to two shows that we already had tickets for in December. Where we once had been looking forward to them, now they were more of a chore. But we went, and we were glad for doing so both times, even though we still weren't exactly 100 percent into them.The first was Lindsey Buckingham at the Scottish Rite Auditorium in Collingswood, New Jersey, on Dec. 1, an intimate venue where we hadn't been to before. Our tickets included the meet-and-greet, and there probably weren't two sadder sacks on the line, but we were making the efforts.
After over three decades of fandom for me and one for Mark, it was really nice to meet the man behind the music. We're firmly #teamLindsey in the senseless Fleetwood Mac feud. A little back story for me, I first saw Fleetwood Mac in 1987 in the friendly confines of the University of South Florida Sun Dome right after Lindsey recorded the Tango in the Night album and left the group before the tour. Two guitarists can't cover the ground that he did, but eventually the Mac found their way back together again. The more recent split seems ridiculous to me in the extreme, but we will take a pair of tickets to see Lindsey over the current Fleetwood Mac cover band any and every day. I do recognize the group as being very malleable and open to change since its inception as a blues band, but I was hoping they again would work it out before they're not around to do so.
But back to the meet and greet. Lindsey was soft-spoken and kind when we stepped up to him. I showed him my Lindsey ring from the '70s -- frequent readers of the blog will recall that I have all five rings from that incarnation and I wear whichever one or ones of the members I'm going to see that particular day. I said something like, "I bet you haven't seen many of these. I wear it every time I see you." After watching him interested in what the people who had gone before us were saying and doing, I wasn't surprised he seemed genuinely touched at the sentiment.
I gave way to Mark, adding that I introduced him to Lindsey's music 10 years ago. "That's why I keep her around," Mark quipped. Lindsey put his hands together and said a profound "thank you" before we had our picture taken together. I don't recall anything else except that his jacket felt very soft.
Nothing is left to chance at a Lindsey show. He even picks the perfect opening act. J.S. Ondara, a singer/songwriter from Nairobi, kept the crowd engaged with lines like "Here's another song you don't know" while belting out a wide array of folk tunes and supplementing them perfectly with his guitar. The man who taught himself English by listening to Bob Dylan and Kurt Cobain is well worth your attention when he comes your way in support of his new album, Tales of America.Setlist: Don't Look Down, Go Insane, Surrender the Rain, Not Too Late, Doing What I Can, Trouble, I Must Go, Street of Dreams, Shut Us Down, Never Going Back Again, Big Love, Slow Dancing, Soul Drifter, Holiday Road, Tusk, I'm So Afraid, Go Your Own Way. Encore: Turn It On, Down on Rodeo, Treason. Lindsey also was touring for a new release, the painstakingly crafted (seriously, would you expect anything else?) Solo Anthology. A lot of the songs in the show hadn't been in his arsenal in years -- aka "Holiday Road," which was so much fun, and "Soul Drifter" (my personal favorite) and some had never approached live (i.e. "Slow Dancing"). Lindsey told the audience he was surprised at his visceral reaction to putting together the anthology, and he found it cohered from the start of his solo career to where he was at that moment.
"I'm someone who likes to look ahead instead of behind me ... that served me well this year," he said. With Lindsey looking so comfortable in his own skin and with his own band (including our personal favorite, the versatile keyboardist/guitarist/vocalist Brett Tuggle), I couldn't begrudge him wanting to avoid the soap opera and continue on in the same vein. So I really won't be heartbroken if Fleetwood Mac isn't reconstructed. (Although I could definitely take more of the Buckingham McVie project.) When Lindsey sang "I've been down one time ... I've been down two times ... I've been down three times ... I'm never going back again," that's kind of the way I wanted it to stay.
"Never Going Back Again" and the show-capping "Treason" were so emotional, working on so many different levels -- hearkening back to his early days while covering the sentiments that freshly arose from the break with Fleetwood Mac. There's no doubt, he's still got it.
Setlist: Set 1: Broke Down on the Brazos, Tributary Jam, Banks of the Deep End, Rocking Horse, Fool's Moon, Railroad Boy, When the World Gets Small, Bad Little Doggie, Blind Man in the Dark, Hear My Train a Comin', Bring on the Music. Set 2: Traveling Tune, Highway Star, Silver Train, Wiser Time, Two Trains, Trane, Tuesday's Gone/Auld Lang Syne, Casey Jones, Stop That Train, Runnin' Down a Dream, End of the Line, Seven Turns, Ramblin' Man, Locomotive Breath, Roadhouse Blues, Train Kept a-Rollin', Travelin' Man, Beautiful Loser. Encore: Crossroader, Drums, Freeway Jam, It Takes a Lot to Laugh It Takes a Train to Cry, Key to the Highway. We capped the month ... and the year at the annual Gov't Mule Beacon Theater residency. This year's theme for the second set was traveling songs (especially those of the train variety) and we got more than our money's worth as the tuneage continued long after the midnight countdown and the dropped balloons had been popped.
We were in the strangest collection of people about a dozen rows from the front door down the left side in the orchestra, anchored by a dinosaur in front of us who had a cane but seemed miraculously healed enough to do some scooting dance moves. One person in our row got nabbed for allegedly "firing up," but it was revealed at one intermission that the woman sitting directly in front of him was the real culprit. A man walked down the aisle to shake everyone's hands after midnight, and three different people around us lost things, using the light from their phones to try to find them at inconvenient times. And, of course, can't go to a Beacon show without having people behind you scream about sitting down. They weren't spring chickens, their last rock show might have been Woodstock. Although the man later was heard to say, "I've never seen so much hustle and bustle," so maybe he wasn't down on the Yasgur farm.
One thing I will never fault will be the concert goers getting up to dance, but even they were a little ... different in our surroundings. During one jam, a guy in front of us was doing some kind of variation on an "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" dance while the faux Moby next to me executed his impression of a boogeying grave digger.
But the music was right on, man. Even if we weren't standing and swaying the whole time like we usually do, it was washing over us in a good way. Particularly when the Allman Brothers' "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" was teased during "When the World Gets Small," and during the not-often-played Allmans gem "Seven Turns." I found the Allman's "End of the Line" a little jarring without the late, great Gregg Allman's vocals, but "Seven Turns" was near perfection.
The energy stayed up with a lot of first-time Gov't Mule offerings, including Jimi Hendrix's "Hear My Train A-Comin', Deep Purple's "Highway Star," The Rolling Stones' "Silver Train," The Black Crowes' "Wiser Time" (recalling my Black Crowes-obsessive days), Little Feat's "Two Trains," Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Tuesday's Gone," The Grateful Dead's "Casey Jones," Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' "Runnin' Down a Dream," The Allmans' "Ramblin' Man," Jethro Tull's "Locomotive Breath" and Bob Seger's "Travelin' Man" and "Beautiful Loser."
For the encore, Corky Laing joined the fray and Warren Haynes cited the drummer's group, Mountain, as part of the initial inspiration for Gov't Mule. Laing's "Drums" and the 30-minute "Freeway Jam" seemed a little ill-advised at the end of a five-hour show, but it's a minor quibble from another show for the ages. One that we sorely needed.
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