Anyone lucky enough to see Jackie Greene while he fronted Phil Lesh & Friends in 2007 and 2008 had to wonder if the young Californian could command the stage with his own band and exude the same charisma. Greene’s October 7th appearance at Higher Ground answered the question…and emphatically.
The two-set performance in the Showcase Lounge didn’t reach the same heights as Greene could scale with the Grateful Dead bassist and company, but the potential is clearly there. Greene was almost apologetic as he introduced the acoustic portion, conduced with guitarist Nathan Dale, but there was nothing less than confident and authoritative about the way he sang and played his tunes. Or the jaunty version he offered of Garcia/Hunter’s “Tennessee Jed.” To Jackie’s credit, he never overtly exploits his Dead connection(s), but in his customarily understated way, suggests he is more than qualified to assist in maintaining the legacy.
Yet, Greene is his own man: “1961” is a short story in song that Greene and Dale performed in suitably stirring fashion.
If anyone in the audience wasn’t convinced at that point in the middle of a set of Green’s originals including the new (“Bad Love”) and the old (“I’m So Gone”), they must’ve been by mid-point of the electric set that followed. The choice of Grateful Dead’s “New Speedway Boogie” was savvy enough in itself, but to then watch and hear Greene lead his group, through ten minutes of instrumental teases of “Eyes of the World” and “The Other One,” was enough to reaffirm the point he made an hour or so before.
With bassist Jeremy Plog and drummer Mike Curry in tow, the quartet reminded at various points of Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Credence Clearwater Revival and vintage Rolling Stones; not that Greene and company were trying to sound like those esteemed units, but the spare streamlined arrangements and the collective panache evoked favorable comparisons.
Any band at all would feel rightfully fortunate to have such good material in their repertoire too. And it wasn’t just recent tunes like “Medicine” that stood on their own and actually benefited from being out of the overly-lush surroundings of the latest Jackie Greene studio record Till The Light Comes (though that was welcome benefit enough). The encore of “Ball & Chain” was just the ultimate example this night of a musician and his band residing right in their element and sharing the sensation with an appreciative, knowledgeable and respectful audience. In years to come, everyone present may look back very fondly at this Vermont show of Jackie Greene’s.
