Brothers of a Feather

I'm in Oakland this week for work, but flew in early to hang out with my brother- and sister-in-law and their kid. Got in Friday night and spent all day Saturday and most of Sunday hanging out with them. Katie's brother, John, is a music freak and somehow got us tickets to the Chris and Rich Robinson acoustic show at a place called Bimbo's 365 Club. Bimbo's is an interesting venue; it reminded me of a dinner theater. There's a stage and then it's just a big room filled with tables all facing the stage. I think that it holds something like 500-600 people. Anyway, we walked in late and got lucky and found a couple of seats along the side wall towards the back. The setlist is as follows with my vague recollections:

Cursed Diamond
Jealous Again
Log Cabin Home In The Sky (originally by the Incredible String Band)
Girl From A Pawnshop
Peace Anyway
Late Nights Again (new song)
Answers (Rich Robinson)
Crow Black Chicken (Ry Cooder)
Miracle To Me
This Is The Way
Untangle My Mind *
Nonfiction * #
Girl On The Mountain * # (Chris Robinson)
Loser # (Grateful Dead)
Wiser Time * #
The Wheel * # (1st time played)
- encore -
The Dolphins * #

those noted with * feature Dave Ellis
those noted with # feature Phil Lesh

The show lasted just over two hours and was very good. I came in with minimal expectations; the last few Black Crowes shows I've seen have been average at best. However, I didn't really know what to expect with just Chris and Rich playing acoustic, so I was interested in seeing how the show would go. I'm happy to say that it easily exceeded all of my expectations. I wouldn't put it in the top 3 BC shows I've ever seen or anything, but it was good. Chris's voice sounded very good and Rich sounded great. It's interesting to see the maturation of the band, and I feel like that's what I've seen over the years. They've gone from a young "spit-in-your-face jam band", through the cool "smoking a ton of pot and drinking a lot" phase, through the weird "way too much coke and heroin" phase, through the "can't get along and break up the band" phase, through the "shitty solo album" phase, and now finally into the "mature, acoustic, controlled jamming and having fun" stage. It's been an interesting 15 years or so.

Anyway, the show started out with just Chris and Rich sitting on stage doing a number of songs. An interesting thing was that I saw Chris play the guitar for the first time. It was basically just rhythm guitar, but I always remember that Chris would play the tambourine or cowbell or something (we always thought that the rest of the band just gave him something harmless like the tambourine just to appease him and get him to shut up). He actually did a nice job on the guitar and played a little harp at the same time!

After the first ten songs or so, Dave Ellis (sax) came out and joined them for a song. It was nice and definitely added something to the sound. But the real show started when Phil Lesh (bass guitar) came out. Phil Lesh is somewhat of a folk hero in San Fran from his time with the 'Dead and his addition added both to the music and to the energy level of the show. The crowd went wild when he was introduced and Chris especially seemed very excited to have him on stage. The rest of the show basically had Chris on vocals, Rich on lead guitar, Dave on sax, and Phil on bass and really made for a great sound.

The setlist was a nice mix of BC songs and random and obscure covers. Many of the songs that they did were not my favorites as part of an album, but they were all great as an acoustic set.

All in all, a great show in a great venue. Not the greatest ever, but one that significantly exceeded expectations.