Mick Taylor
Grand Emporium
February 8, 2000

Review by Paul "El Dormido" Taylor

It is a special event when a modern music legend the caliber of Mick Taylor plays a small, intimate venue like the Grand Emporium. You get to hear, see and feel the full force of the musician’s creative power, savor it really, without getting lost in a sea of spectacle.

So it was on this mild Tuesday night for the capacity crowd who assembled early and eagerly for Mick Taylor’s touring band for front line musicians including Jeff Ross – Keyboards, Michael Bailey – Bass, Jeff Allen – Drums, and Robert Awhai - Rhythm Guitar.

Fast Johnny Ricker opened the show with a solo acoustic set, an unusual event itself. The well known local guitar hero usually fronts a powerful 3 piece band but this night he was just voice and guitar. Musically it was the most complementary of bookings to the Mick Taylor show.

There probably isn’t another musician in town who could take the stage solo and command such an enthusiastic response from a crowd waiting for a major act. As much as Johnny is known for his guitar mastery, he is just as able as a singer, performing all original tunes.

Johnny’s acoustic technique is different than his electric style. He employs that nimble, skittering slide technique but even more amazingly so without the sustain of electric amplification. His lightening slide solo on dobro during the tune “Trouble Hound” drew spontaneous applause from the audience.

Johnny plays with a strong rhythmic propulsion to his acoustic music, pulling out solo lines from within his full chording technique. He attacks the strings and lets them resonate between the beats of his churning rhythm.

His slide workout on “How High am I” drew whistles from the crowd. During his last number, “Flying”, he leaned into the mic for his vocal, the power of his performance sustaining him at a precarious angle. He did his job, and then some, setting the stage for Mick Taylor.

You can keep up with Fast Johnny Ricker and the Riders at his website, www.fastjohnny.com.

Mick Taylor opened with “Twisted Sister”, a sophisticated composition that featured his vocal and instrumental phrasing in unison to marvelous effect. The tune allowed the band to immediately demonstrate how good all the players were. Mick used a finger picking style with tasteful slide fills blending in with his single string leads and block chording.

By the way, the place was packed with guitar players checking out the master.

“A Secret Affair” was next, another sophisticated composition with image laden lyrics propelled by a strong bass pulse and judicious interweaving of slide and single string runs. “Late at Night” follows with a compelling lyric and emotive vocal assistance by Michael Bailey: “…you were such distraction, such a fatal attraction….”. Then “You Gotta Move”, a classic Mississippi Fred McDowell blues number built on the Robert Johnson “Come ona My Kitchen…” riff.

“Goin' South” is a latin rhythm workout with a Carlos Santana feel subtly worked throughtout the tune, especially in the tone, sustain and lyrical guitar passages Mick plays. Mick relies on repeated figures rather then long solo lines here. He is more content to fill the sound rather than elaborate, so the song is more of a band number than a guitar tour de force. Bass, second guitar and drum solos allow the band to stretch out some.

We next get a slide blues rendition of “You Shook Me” done at a very deliberate pace. Then the closing number for the show, which, I think, is “Blues in the Morning”. It commences with a slow, stately, intro and then heads into a big production number, definitely a contemporary adult composition, “…gazing out my window of the St. James Hotel…”

The enthusiastic crowd elicited an encore from the band, a heavy beat rocker proclaiming the arrival of the boogie man, time to lock up the women in town. This tune segues into the jazzy coda from “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’”, definitely one of my favorite Stones compositions.

The whole show clocked in at around 2 hours without a break, except for the encore. The crowd was quite happy with the show, many staying after, some gathering at the front of the double decker bus talking with the band.

Mick Taylor’s guitar has always been for me a sleek, modern, glass and steel type of sound, like driving on the freeway at dusk through a modern skyscraper landscape. He is certainly responsible for creating a significant body of music that changed the way people listened to rock. His playing throughout the show sustained a high level of musicianship without overpowering the music with grandiose pyrotechnics.

Sometimes he seemed to rely on repeated figures to fill out the music rather than to develop a solo statement. In that regard I wanted to hear more from him, and from the band as well. While there was a high level of musicianship consistent throughout the music, the performance overall lacked an edge of creative, spontaneous invention. Yet its hard to fault what otherwise was a great event.

For the music itself, the sophistication of the compositions, the singing and playing, Mick Taylor’s latest CD, “A Stone's Throw", is definitely worth checking out, as well as digging to find his first solo release, “Mick Taylor”, plus all the session work he’s put in between times.

Whatever caveats I may have as a music reviewer, this was a “can’t miss..” show. Mick Taylor is not just music history but an ongoing, creative, artistic enterprise. Just for that, I’d show up next time.

For more information on Mick Taylor, check out www.micktaylor.com.

--Paul "El Dormido" Taylor