Arts & Entertainment

Roots Rock Series Finale in Port Washington Digs Deep

Lindley and Hammond treat Landmark to 60's-inspired traditional music.

This article was posted by Adina Genn. It was written by Mark Underwood. 

The Landmark’s 2012-2013 Roots Rock series closed with a tasty mix of tradition, slide guitar, harmonica and humor as David Lindley and John Hammond took turns Saturday on the local stage.

It was Lindley who appeared first, a unique collection of guitar and guitar-like instruments in tow. Chosen from an even more diverse home collection, he brought five instruments, including a solid body Turkish oud (similar to a lute) and a couple of Weissenborn lap guitars.

Exotic stringed instruments would be no side dish for this performance. For instance, a Weissenborn was used to good effect on Lindley’s version of collaborator Jackson Browne’s “Revenge Will Come.”  Browne and Lindley worked together on the 2011 Grammy album nominee, "Love is Strange." 

In the course of a long career, Lindley has performed in many places, but when he mischievously insisted that despite appearances to the contrary, he had worked out some of his tunes at Disneyland, the audience was forced to imagine a time when the notorious Disney employee dress code was more flexible.

Lindley’s collaborator list is long and august. When Lindley performed Warren Zevon’s “Beneath the Vast Indifference of Heaven,” he was invoking the memory of the late songwriter’s highly regarded final album, "The Wind," on which Lindley appeared.

Lindley closed an improvisation-rich set with “Little Green Bottle,” an uproarious chronicling of drug-assisted mood management – Big Pharma style – reminiscent of the classic “Alice’s Restaurant.” The song’s lyrical fragment referring to “strawberry urinal cake” took dead aim at the audience’s funny bone.

John Hammond is sometimes credited more with furthering the careers of others – notably, the Band, with whom he first performed in Toronto, and famously recommended to Bob Dylan – than for furthering the arc of his own career. This is true despite Hammond’s Grammy winning appearance on the 1984 album "Blues Explosion" and subsequent nominations for projects in 1992, 1993 and 1996.

A straight-ahead traditionalist, Hammond followed Lindley with songs featuring capable voice, guitar and harmonica arrangements. Unlike some solo performers, Hammond’s guitar and harmonica lines sometimes moved independently. Not merely a serious feat of coordination, this added agility with the harmonica contributed a more complex element to his typically slide-dominated sound styling.

He paid homage to classic blues players like Howlin’ Wolf, Blind Willie McTell and Muddy Waters by energetically covering tunes like Willie McTell’s “Savannah Mama.” Hammond also performed “Get Behind the Mule,” by friend and fellow songwriter Tom Waits, and songs from his own 34-album repertoire, including “Heartache Blues,” “Come to Find Out,” “You Know That’s Cold” and “Come on in My Kitchen.”

Hammond makes common cause with the likes of Eric Clapton, who, when singing in this genre, has a markedly similar voice and avows like allegiance to blues legends Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters.

Without saying as much, Hammond admonished his Port Washington audience not to forget its blues roots forged during a tortured period in American history.

There’s still more music left in the season at the local venue. Chris Mann appears in concert on May 3, and on May 10 of the following week the annual Landmark gala features Stephanie J. Block. The following night, May 11, Tony Desare returns with his portfolio of tunes from the American songbook.


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