Review: Jimmy Herring Band @ Highline
The Jimmy Herring Band @ Highline Ballroom – November 15
When Jimmy Herring picks up a guitar and starts in on one of those astoundingly rich improvisational flights, it’s tough to get enough. He’s the type of player, be it with Panic or in any other context, for whom warmth and brilliance are as characteristic as technique and intensity – an always-dazzling display, but not a straight clinic, and never cold. He can sparkle, he can wail, he can bring ferocious energy, he can play with comfortable restraint and an ear for dynamics, and, like his good buddy Derek Trucks, he can consistently confound expectations for what should happen during a guitar solo. You’re drawn in and mesmerized and helpless to resist.
That’s one of the reasons that this much-welcome Jimmy Herring Band tour has been a success, and the Highline Ballroom show, nearly sold out, was two hours of expansive, psychedelic bliss. Another reason, though, is that Herring has taken an inherently indulgent format – the guitar wizard who puts together a solo band focused on all-instrumental jazz-rock – and hasn’t just left it as an excuse for a pick-up jam. We know he can play. We’ve learned he’s a strong bandleader: mindful of group dynamics, and knowing when to pour it on and when to get out of his own way.
Herring is the group’s center of attention and it’s his improvisations that drive the show, but he’s created something so much richer than a set of instrumentals with excuses for guitar heroics. Every selection at the Highline, whether a Herring original or a worked-over chestnut from the Meters, Jeff Beck, Zeppelin, the Beatles or elsewhere, felt meaningful and turned out, with a band that burrowed deep inside and fleshed out as many improvisational possibilities within as they could.
READ ON for more on the Jimmy Herring Band…
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