The Wallflowers In Concert

So. The Wallflowers show Wednesday night up at the Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa.

Lemme tell ya, that was a kickass show. Those boys rock.

Ended up getting there about two hours before the show started...which was okay, since I had to pick up my ticket about an hour before the show opened. Ended up sitting around outside for an hour just chatting with the people who were also waiting for the show.

The band consisted of Jakob Dylan (whom I swear to God looks exactly like his father circa 1964. It's creepy), Rami Jaffe, their bassist and drummer, and producer Brendan O'Brien on lead guitar (we actually got a chance to meet Mr. O'Brien before the show when he came out and hopped into a car and drove off for somewhere. Of course, I had no idea he was Brendan O'Brien at the time).

Anyway, they mostly played stuff off of Bringing Down the Horse. Probably a good 1/2 to 2/3 of the show came from that album, including songs such as "One Headlight," "6th Avenue Heartache," "God Don't Make Lonely Girls," "Invisible City," "Three Marlenas," and "The Difference." They also played three tunes from Breach: "Letters from the Wasteland," "Sleepwalker," and "Some Flowers Bloom Dead." They also played one off of their self-titled debut, "After the Blackbird Sings." The rest of the set was brand new material from their forthcoming album. They didn't play anything from Red Letter Days, oddly enough.

The new songs were uniformly excellent; much better than the stuff on Red Letter Days. All in all, the band was on fire for the whole show. Jakob joked and chatted with the audience throughout, and you could tell everyone on stage and off were enjoying themselves. It was loud, it was energetic, and it was about as good as you could hope for in a concert.

One of the strangest things I noticed during the show (aside from the complete absence of any songs from a whole album) was that Dylan's phrasing was remarkably like his father's. At one point, when a heckler said something about "singing in key," Dylan joked that this was a free-form show, and they could all play and sing in whatever key each person wanted to. This apparently extended to the way he would sing phrases--stretching them out, singing on the off-beat, and basically sounding alot like Dylan the elder. But y'know, it worked, just as it always worked for Papa Bob.

All in all, I'm glad I got to go see this show. Wish I'd been able to track down my friend Rana (who was supposed to try and attend the same show), but never could find her. Show still kicked ass. Can't wait for their next album.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Wallflowers, "Three Marlenas (Live)"