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by Julian Spivey  Julian Spivey Photo American Aquarium made the trek to the Rev Room in Little Rock, Ark., on Saturday, May 10, for the fourth trip to Arkansas in the last eight months, and the fifth overall for frontman B.J. Barham. Arkansas has always been the home away from home for the Raleigh, N.C.-based band. As Barham often says. Little Rock was the first place to make the band feel at home outside of its home state.
With the recent news that the Rev Room won’t be renewing its lease at year’s end, and may no longer exist altogether, it might have been the band’s final trip to one of two venues in the town it frequents – the other being the White Water Tavern, which seems to be the group’s preferred home, but houses way fewer patrons. American Aquarium shows are always a couple of hours of heart-pounding, 100 percent effort from the band, featuring fantastic musicianship and incredibly storytelling lyrics from Barham. You can tell just how much Barham and the boys give on stage by the sweat-drenched clothes they wear. The band opened Saturday’s show with the raucous “Katherine Belle,” a fan-favorite off the 2009 album Dances For The Lonely. It was a perfect way to set the stage for a terrific evening of music. There were the usual A.A. songs that you’ll see at most of their shows, which the audience likes to shout along to in unison, ranging from classics that have been with the band nearly its entire run, like “I Hope He Breaks Your Heart,” “Casualties,” “St. Mary’s,” and, my personal favorite, “Burn.Flicker.Die.,” which always ends their main set. However, the set almost always includes newer fan favorites like “The Luckier You Get,” too, and it seems “Cherokee Purples,” off last year’s The Fear of Standing Still, is gaining traction as well. At this point, I’ve seen American Aquarium more than any other act live – this was my fifth time seeing either A.A. or Barham solo since October. It was amazing to me that there were three songs I’d never seen them perform live that they broke out on the setlist on Saturday: “Ramblin’ Ways,” “Family Problems,” and “Louisiana Beauty Queen,” which they ended their show with. It just goes to show you never know what you’re going to get from an American Aquarium show, as Barham will play any song he’s ever written and recorded on any given evening. One of my favorite A.A. songs is “A Better South,” off the band’s 2020 album Lamentations, which I had seen them perform live before, but they hadn’t played it in Arkansas in some time. Luckily, a friend and co-worker of my wife was photographing Barham before the show and mentioned it was one she wanted to hear. Barham, seemingly always the mensch, fit it into the set. It was special for both of us, and probably my favorite single performance of this show. Texan blues singer and guitarist Buffalo Nichols opened the evening and seemed to be battling sound issues throughout his entire set. The set ultimately ended more abbreviated than intended when the venue mistook his show for being over and began playing music over what was to be his final performance, sending him off the stage in a tizzy. Both he and the crowd deserved better. The snafu was one of the more disrespectful moments I’d ever seen a venue do to a musician, but the way he reacted to it was also one of the more disrespectful things I’d ever seen in concert. He honestly didn’t seem like he wanted to be there.
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by Julian Spivey  Aprille Spivey Photo Bonnie Raitt brought her terrific voice and exceptional guitar playing to the Robinson Center in Little Rock, Ark., on Wednesday, May 7, for a wonderful evening of music. Raitt told the sold-out audience that she had been performing on the road for 54 years, which is remarkable, as she hasn’t lost a step. She sounds just as amazing live in person at 75 years old as she does on her records. Raitt’s body of work holds a little bit of everything – blues, rock, folk, Americana and even a pop crossover or two – and she proved as much on Wednesday night. Raitt began her 16-song set with the rocking “I Sho Do,” which she recorded on her 1994 album Longing In Their Hearts. Throughout the evening, she would perform her most legendary hits, along with some deep cuts – some of which she told the audience she rarely played, like Paul Brady’s “Steal Your Heart Away,” which she told the crowd she wanted to practice on us with because she’d be playing it in front of Brady when she tours in his home country of Ireland next month. One of the night’s best performances was when Raitt showed off her songwriting with “Just Like That,” the surprising Grammy Awards Song of the Year winner off her latest album, Just Like That… (2022). Raitt admitted she hasn’t done a whole lot of songwriting throughout her career, but was inspired by the incredible story songs of her good friend John Prine. It’s amazing that one of the times she writes her own stuff, it was not only this beautiful, tear-jerking song, but good enough to win the Grammy for overall Song of the Year. As a huge fan of Prine, one of the night’s highlights was her performance of his “Angel From Montgomery.” Her recording of it on 1974’s Streetlights helped bring both it and Prine to the forefront of some music lovers, who hadn’t been hip to Prine’s fantastic self-titled 1971 debut. Among the best blues output from Raitt’s set on Wednesday were her cover of Mabel John’s “Your Good Thing (Is About to End),” which she dedicated to the blues/R&B singer who died in 2022, and Sippie Wallace’s “Women Be Wise.” Raitt has done a lot to keep some of the lesser-known names of women blues singers alive throughout the years. It was Raitt’s most well-known works that I found myself gravitating toward throughout the evening, as a fan of hers who isn’t all that familiar with her deeper cuts. This means performances like her John Hiatt cover, “Thing Called Love,” “Nick of Time,” and “Something to Talk About,” which nearly brought the house down, were among my favorites of the evening. Perhaps the best performance of the entire night was her encore opener of “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” which is probably the song she’s most known for throughout her Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and award-winning career. The fact that she sounds just as good now as she did on her 1991 album Luck of the Draw was jaw-dropping. It’s one of those live concert moments that anyone who witnessed won’t forget anytime soon. Raitt finished the show with performances of Michael McDonald’s “Matters of the Heart” and “Love Sneakin’ Up on You,” incorporating a bit of Chaka Khan’s “You Got the Love” into the mix. Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentleman opened the evening with their fascinating mixture of New Orleans funk and R&B, mostly performing tracks off their latest album, The Bywater Sessions, which dropped April 25. Among the fun performances from that album were “Zulu Coconuts,” “Boneyard,” “Fessa Longhair Boogaloo” and “Just Kissed My Baby.” by Julian Spivey  Julian Spivey Photo Singer-songwriter Parker Millsap wrapped his month-long tour at the White Water Tavern in Little Rock, Ark., on Sunday, May 4. He fit about 18 songs into a brief, less than 90-minute set, showcasing his powerful vocals and excellent guitar playing. I first saw Parker Millsap live at the Outland Ballroom in Springfield, Mo., in the summer of 2017. At the time, he had only two solo albums under his belt, and his most recent album, The Very Last Day, from the year before, had been one of my favorites. In his early 20s, Millsap put forth one of the most energetic, foot-stomping shows I’d ever seen, completely drenched in sweat by the show’s end. His first two albums were the kind of gospel-tinged, alt-country-folk Americana that led to both performer and crowd constantly moving in unison to the raucous performances. After that, Millsap’s music began to change. It became a little more bluesy, rock-ish and even poppier. On his latest album, 2023’s Wilderness Within You, his music changed again to a more stripped down folksy vibe. He’s a chameleon who loves different sounds and writes and records in these various sounds. I haven’t liked his three most recent albums nearly as much as I did The Very Last Day, but they’re still worthwhile, and Millsap showed on Sunday night in person that these sounds all mesh together fairly well in a live setting, even if they didn’t always catch my ear on the recordings. On Sunday night, he performed three songs from The Very Last Day at the White Water Tavern: the title track, “Hades Pleads” and, my ultimate favorite, “Heaven Sent.” They were my favorite performances of the evening, but I could’ve told you going in that would likely be the case. It’s probably just my affection for these songs that makes me feel this way, but they, along with the similar fire-and-brimstone-sounding “Truckstop Gospel” from 2014’s self-titled album, seem to be Millsap at his best. “Heaven Sent,” the story of the gay son of a preacher who struggles with his dad's inability to understand him, has been one of my favorite songs since I first heard it in 2016. On this website, I ranked it the best Americana/Country song of 2016 and the No. 8 best song of the decade (2010-2019) in 2019. The bluesy tracks from Millsap’s three most recent albums, such as “The Real Thing " from 2021’s Be Here Instead and “Your Water” from 2018’s Other Arrangements, were the ones I liked the most from his post-The Very Last Day output. Other highlights included “Front Porchin’” and “So Far Apart,” with which he opened the show, from Wilderness Within You. Millsap had a fantastic group of musicians playing with him on Sunday night: Michael Zimmerman on bass, Hayden Cotcher on drums and the fantastic Bobby Steinfeld on keys. Millsap wrapped up the night with a solo performance of a beautiful new song called “Before the Curtain Closes,” which was a fitting way to end the evening. The song is a part of a four-song EP he’s recorded with the musical ensemble Lockeland Strings, which drops this upcoming Friday (May 9). |