
Review: The Love Show
Get comfortable; this could take a while. Wednesday’s Roots was like two shows in one, each with its own personality and integrity. Act One featured three wildly different but complimentary musical visions. Act Two was a coming out party for a superb album by a beloved Nashville musician. Together they added up to a night of immeasurable heart and joy. The musical skills on display in both halves were stunning for sure, but the evening affirmed that technique can get you on the highway but it can’t take you all the way home. Because home is about heart. I think the reason I gravitated toward roots music and away from the fashionable main stream had to do with temperature. Like a migrating bird, I needed to move away from the cool and toward the warm. Radio pop/rock depends on a posture that’s aloof, guarded, stylish and kind of cynical. The world’s harsh and ironic and touch-less as it is. I want my music to wrap me in something comforting and I don’t have time for masks. If something can be transparently beautiful, then why not?
Jake Shimabukuro is pushing 40 but his face, his energy and his body language on stage suggest something like half that. You know how Chris Thile can look like he’s about to bounce to the moon he’s so happy about playing? That’s Jake with his ukulele. He came out roaring with a flamenco-infused tune, played in sensitive partnership with only electric bass player Nolan Verner. It was so dazzling he got a full house standing ovation for the first song. (Good start to the night, said the producers silently to themselves.) Then the room hushed for the tender “Ichigo Ichie” and remained transfixed for his signature tune, the expansive arrangement of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” It’s got delicacy and classical counterpoint here and polychromatic rocking power there. It led to some tandem jazz lines between the instruments and a fine bass solo. And the closer (I’m not clear on most of the tune titles at this stage) found Jake building harmonic ideas on a looping pedal and soloing over his own chords in a heavy metal meets blues kind of finale. I got to spend 30 minutes on the radio with Jake before the show and it was inspiring; watch for that conversation on the web site soon.
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