Yoshi's presents David Lindley, with opener, Cindy Lee Berryhill
Jack London Square, 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland, CA 94607-3506 USA
8:00 PM, Monday, May 29, 2017
Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2017 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2017 event list! ☸ On to the next event!
[7:47 PM lights down, announcements, dead air, band out, more dead air]
[8:49 PM lights down, dead air, 8:50 PM intro, Dave out]
I was really looking forward to hearing Mr. Dave tonight … seems like it's been awhile since we last had that chance. Got down to Yoshi's just in time to see the admit line starting to move on inside, so I scooped up a couple tickets and then joined ourselves to the tail of that line, snaked our way inside and found a pair of seats just off-center in the middle of the house. Not bad!
As the place filled up, I was surprised and happy to see several different friends walk in, but just as I decided to hop off my bar stool and go socialize, they dimmed the house lights for the opening act. What's this? Starting a show at 7:45 PM? What a nutty idea! Back up onto my seat, I went, then proceeded to listen to Cindy Lee Berryhill and Renata Bratt. I suppose I would have appreciated their set more if I hadn't been so anxious to hear Mr. Dave, but instead, my frame of mind made a zero-sum game out of the evening: every minute more of the opener meant a minute less for the king of polyester. Did I enjoy the opener? Well, a little. But not a lot. Could have used a bit more variety of sound. Might be worth checking out her albums via Google Play or a similar service. She certainly has great friends sitting in on those efforts!
Anyways, it was almost 9 PM by the time that Mr. Dave got himself onstage, and he managed to get through the first tune, a cover of Warren Zevon's Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me, without having plugged in the preamp to his Weissenborn guitar. Ah jes' knew it sounded weird, but couldn't say exactly why until that switch was made, then, BLAMMO! The big twang was on again, and Dave had the room a-boomin' with that blooming wooden sound. The treat of the night was the relatively long oud workout in the middle of the set. After taking a minute or three to talk about his oud, he proceeded to jam aimlessly (saying, it's all about “getting out of the way and letting the instrument play what it wants” or something like that), then segued into the “short” version of Mr. Snakehead. Yay! A new tune!
All too soon, the house minder was signalling time to wrap things up, so Dave finished his set with a relatively brief version of Mercury Blues (“a special request by my shoes”, he said, by way of introduction), then popped offstage for about 30 seconds before returning for a quick encore of Well, Well, Well. It would have been nice to hear more, but I guess 10 PM's the curfew for a Monday night around here. Bummer about that!
Still, I'm glad I made it, and I hope he comes back soon!
Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2017 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2017 event list! ☸ On to the next event!