Dawes w/ Gill Landry, Warner Theatre, 6/6/2015

Orchestra, Row E, Seat 109 – dead center, several rows back from the stage 

 

While I like the band Dawes a lot, I don’t follow every interview and news item, so I was surprised when five guys, rather than four, walked up on stage around 9:15 Saturday evening. Turned out that the band recently added guitarist Duane Betts (son of Dickey Betts of Allman Brothers fame) to their touring lineup. The change actually makes a big difference; while Taylor Goldsmith still played a mean guitar himself at many points in the show, he no longer had to handle all of the guitar work himself in addition to all the lead vocals. This let him be more expressive gesture-wise on some of the songs, and also produced a couple great two-guitar jams.

 

The band started off with “Things Happen” (the lead single from their just-released All Your Favorite Bands LP), followed by two more tracks from that album, “Don’t Send Me Away” and “Somewhere Along The Way.” The latter was stunning with its vocal harmonies and guitar work near the end, producing the first of many standing ovations. They then went “back to the beginning” for “That Western Skyline”, the very first track from their debut CD. They continued with a mix of older material (hitting my favorite, “A Little Bit Of Everything”, about midway through) and a few more tracks from the new album. The finally got to “When My Time Comes”, getting everyone to their feet and singing along, and concluded the main set around 10:45 with “From The Right Angle” – not one of my favorites, but it worked well live. They returned with a couple of must-performs, “Time Spent In Los Angeles” and “From A Window Seat”, winding up with the title track from the new LP, which was particularly appropriate given its reference to Charlottesville in the first verse.

 

Bottom line – rock & roll lives! Best show I’ve seen so far this year, against some tough competition.

Setlist from setlist.fm 

Gill Landry, who’s also in the band Old Crow Medicine Show, did a 35-minute opening set, going solo on acoustic guitar for the first few songs, then bringing out a drummer and a fiddle player. The show was bookended by the first and last tracks from his current self-titled album, “Funeral In My Heart” and “Bad Love”. (As you might gather, Gill is a mournful kind of guy.) He did have the best one-liner of the evening when introducing his second song: “I actually wrote this one for Katy Perry, but she never wrote back.”