The tunes of blues-rock musician Johnny Rivers, rich in atmosphere and distinct with Southern soul, are something everyone has at least heard once.
The singer, who experienced his greatest success around the same time as the British Invasion in the 1960s, wrote some of the most notable hits of the decade, layered with that familiar Southern soulful inflection.
His songs continue to frequent FM radio with popular tunes such as “Secret Agent Man,” “Poor Side of Town,” “The Midnight Special,” “Baby, I Need Your Lovin’” and “Summer Rain.”
The artist, who was in town this past Friday night for a performance at the Celebrity Theatre, appeared before a nearly filled arena, with only the upper seats unfilled, cleverly hidden by the lighting set-up during all the sets.
Much of the people in attendance were baby boomers who were in their teens when Rivers wrote his signature hits.
Before Rivers made his appearance, there was not one but two opening acts in front of him. First up was R&B singer credited by the theater as a “special guest.”
She stayed on for three numbers before exiting the stage for the official opening act, Gene Deer, whose record label, Daddy Real Records, compares to Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters and Stevie Ray Vaughn.
The Stevie Ray Vaughn-like sound is much more overt in Deer’s music, with the hard-driving Texas blues prevalent in his cover of Eddie Cochran’s “Sixteen Tons,” as well as in his own compositions such as “I Think We Could Have Gotten Along, If She Just Laid Off The Booze.”
The incredibly gifted guitarist effortlessly moved his fingers up and down the neck of the guitar he played.
After a 10-minute interlude, Rivers made his appearance clad in black, with a loose button-down shirt and heeled boots and sporting a neatly trimmed goatee, now part of his staple look.
The impeccably dressed Rivers kicked off the evening with a reworked version of his hit song, “Midnight Special,” performed in a slower tempo and peppered with an organ played by his pianist, Scott Healy.
In addition to Healy, his tour band consists of Stu Johnson on percussion and Norm Sancho on bass.
Another highlight of the evening was the stripped-down version of the traditional song, “House of the Rising Sun,” sounding more like its folkish roots than The Animals’ arrangement.
The revisions weren’t how he soared, although, they were just as compelling. Instead, the area Rivers and the band excelled was in his old standby list of familiar hits that everybody in the audience had heard hundreds of times in the past.
The musician’s voice matured since his early days. It’s slightly older, yet processes that same Southern twang heard on all his old Whiskey-A-Go-Go live albums. Some of his older hits take on increased complexity and roughness when the 69-year-old Rivers performs them.
“Poor Side of Town” resonates with added pain and experience when Rivers belts, “I can’t blame you for tryin’,” after the narrator’s girl returned to him following an affair with a rich man. This is exemplified even more for his old cover of the Smokey Robinson’s “Tracks of My Tears.”
For “The Snake,” he sings more abrasively about the girl who took in a poisonous creature.
The later he went into his set, the further he had a tight hold on the audience. The house’s cramped seating could barely contain the clapping, foot stomping and wooing. A testament to this was when Rivers elicited the females and then the males to sing in on verses during “Baby, I Need Your Lovin’.”
The taut musicianship of the band created this electricity and energy in the audience. For material going into its fifth decade, it scarcely sounds like it.
The night closed with an encore of three hits the audience only expected him to play: “Memphis,” “Maybellene,” and of course “Secret Agent Man.” By then, he not only had them clapping and singing along, but also standing and swaying at the risk of nudging the person next to them. Some of the female audience members were dancing where they stood.
If you were to shut your eyes, you could only vaguely tell the difference between being at the Celebrity Theatre or the Whiskey A-Go-Go in 1964.
Why exactly is this man not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame yet? It’s rigged, I tell ya.
http://www.statepress.com/2012/04/16/rocker-johnny-rivers-brings-rich-southern-soul/
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