Oak Cliff, 6.2.2019
I go back a long way with Nils Lofgren, whose career spans 50 years -- since he set out from his native DC for California with his band, aged 17 -- and by whom I was inspahrd to pick up a guitar 48 years ago, when I saw him exploding out of my mother's TV (a few months after I'd witnessed the Stooges' iconic Cincinnati appearance via the same medium). It was a PBS special about Nils' mentor, the late, tormented guitar genius Roy Buchanan, and in the show's closing ten minutes, 19-year-old Nils took the stage to jam on Junior Walker's "Shotgun" and proceeded to blow his august elder away with the cockiness of a hot youngster just beginning to find his power, overplaying with the adrenaline-driven urge to be exciting. The memory of it remains burned into my synapses, so when I heard he was bringing a full band to The Kessler -- my favorite listening room -- I knew I was going to have to be there.
By the time the Buchanan TV show aired, Nils had already played piano on Neil Young's After the Gold Rush (turns out the secret ingredient in "Southern Man" was a polka beat injected by former accordion nerd Lofgren, a story he told with great relish at the Kess); he'd also add crucial piano and guitar damage (dig his Djangoesque solo on "Speakin' Out") to Neil's blasted masterwork Tonight's the Night. (And you must see the 1982 video -- Youtube available, I do believe -- of Nils with Neil in Berlin during the Trans era, where he functions as much as a dancer as a musician.) More recently, he's filled out the Crazy Horse lineup when Poncho Sampedro was unable to play.
With his early '70s trio Grin, Nils showed he had the goods as a singer-songwriter, whether rockin' ("White Lies," "Moontears") or mellow ("Lost A Number"). He then had the misfortune to be signed to A&M as a solo artist at the same time as the more marketable Peter Frampton was doing the same gig. (My buddy Geoff from Philly, who Knows, swears that if they'd released Nils' 1975 "authorized bootleg" Back It Up!! instead of 1977's less stellar Night After Night, it might have been a different story. He once sent me a VHS tape I still treasure, with the '71 "Shotgun" along with two mid-'70s Old Grey Whistle Test sets that show off solo-era Nils to his best advantage.) Lofgren went on to spend 30 years as third guitarist in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, after playing the best guitar solo ever to appear on a Springsteen record on "Tunnel of Love" back in '87. Like his longtime employer, he's a hell of a raconteur, a talent which served him well through 15 years of solo acoustic gigs that culminated in this year's band tour.
The occasion for said tour is the release of Blue With Lou, a set of Lofgren originals, half of which were co-written with the late Lou Reed back in '79, when Bob Ezrin was co-producing the album Nils for Lofgren and suggested that he contact former Ezrin client Reed for lyric-writing assistance. The result was 13 Lofgren-Reed songs, three of which appeared on Nils, two on Reed's The Bells, and three on subsequent Lofgren projects. Nils' current touring band -- journeyman drummer Andy Newmark, bassist Kevin McCormick, and E Street Band singer Cindy Mizelle -- is the same one that appears on the record, augmented by his brother Tom Lofgren on keys and second guitar. They're all stupendous.
The new songs they played work off percussive, Stones-y blues riffs that Lofgren cranks out on a customized Strat (only two knobs!) he wields at an unconventional angle to accommodate his idiosyncratic picking technique -- he uses a thumbpick and damps the strings with his index finger to create chiming harmonics -- employing a clean tone which he dirties up with effects for his solos. At times he sounds like he's using a slide, but it's all in his hands (and no vibrato arm, either). Or he'll use the volume control on his guitar to mask his pick attack (a trick he picked up from Buchanan). At this point, Lofgren's become a Zen master like Jeff Beck, but he still gets a laugh with a story about him and his high school guitar buddies trying to figure out what fuzzbox Keith Richards and Hendrix used, buying the pedal, "and it still didn't sound right."
Lou's lyrics ranged from altruistic ("Give") to hard-nosed ("Don't Let Your Guard Down"), while Lofgren demonstrated he's no slouch with "Too Blue To Play" (the tale of a traumatized war veteran who'd be at home in the darkness on the edge of Springsteen's town) and "Rock Or Not" (which casts a sardonic eye on the times we're living in). The rest of the set drew from the length and breadth of Lofgren's catalog, from the very first Grin LP ("Like Rain") to 1991's Silver Lining (the ebullient "Walking Nerve" that opened the set, and the tender "Girl In Motion," which Lofgren preceded with a story about his own sobriety and 20-years-and-counting marriage). "Big Tears Fall" from 1985's Flip provided a strong feature for Mizelle, after which Lofgren -- on piano -- essayed the version of Carole King's "Goin' Back" that was a highlight of his eponymous debut LP. And my ears perked up when the '77 FM radio staple "I Came To Dance" emerged from a singalong jam on the Temptations' "Papa Was A Rolling Stone."
After an hour and 45 minutes, Lofgren and band vacated the stage, only to return momentarily for the de rigueur encore "Shine Silently" (co-written for Nils with Ezrin studio mainstay/Detroit guitar legend Dick Wagner); my buddy and I figured that after playing decades of three-and-a-half hour shows with Springsteen, this was Nils' light work. Then we had to bounce back to Fort Worth, but it was an evening well spent with Mr. Lofgren. Maturity -- and the humility it can bring -- becomes him.
By the time the Buchanan TV show aired, Nils had already played piano on Neil Young's After the Gold Rush (turns out the secret ingredient in "Southern Man" was a polka beat injected by former accordion nerd Lofgren, a story he told with great relish at the Kess); he'd also add crucial piano and guitar damage (dig his Djangoesque solo on "Speakin' Out") to Neil's blasted masterwork Tonight's the Night. (And you must see the 1982 video -- Youtube available, I do believe -- of Nils with Neil in Berlin during the Trans era, where he functions as much as a dancer as a musician.) More recently, he's filled out the Crazy Horse lineup when Poncho Sampedro was unable to play.
With his early '70s trio Grin, Nils showed he had the goods as a singer-songwriter, whether rockin' ("White Lies," "Moontears") or mellow ("Lost A Number"). He then had the misfortune to be signed to A&M as a solo artist at the same time as the more marketable Peter Frampton was doing the same gig. (My buddy Geoff from Philly, who Knows, swears that if they'd released Nils' 1975 "authorized bootleg" Back It Up!! instead of 1977's less stellar Night After Night, it might have been a different story. He once sent me a VHS tape I still treasure, with the '71 "Shotgun" along with two mid-'70s Old Grey Whistle Test sets that show off solo-era Nils to his best advantage.) Lofgren went on to spend 30 years as third guitarist in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, after playing the best guitar solo ever to appear on a Springsteen record on "Tunnel of Love" back in '87. Like his longtime employer, he's a hell of a raconteur, a talent which served him well through 15 years of solo acoustic gigs that culminated in this year's band tour.
The occasion for said tour is the release of Blue With Lou, a set of Lofgren originals, half of which were co-written with the late Lou Reed back in '79, when Bob Ezrin was co-producing the album Nils for Lofgren and suggested that he contact former Ezrin client Reed for lyric-writing assistance. The result was 13 Lofgren-Reed songs, three of which appeared on Nils, two on Reed's The Bells, and three on subsequent Lofgren projects. Nils' current touring band -- journeyman drummer Andy Newmark, bassist Kevin McCormick, and E Street Band singer Cindy Mizelle -- is the same one that appears on the record, augmented by his brother Tom Lofgren on keys and second guitar. They're all stupendous.
The new songs they played work off percussive, Stones-y blues riffs that Lofgren cranks out on a customized Strat (only two knobs!) he wields at an unconventional angle to accommodate his idiosyncratic picking technique -- he uses a thumbpick and damps the strings with his index finger to create chiming harmonics -- employing a clean tone which he dirties up with effects for his solos. At times he sounds like he's using a slide, but it's all in his hands (and no vibrato arm, either). Or he'll use the volume control on his guitar to mask his pick attack (a trick he picked up from Buchanan). At this point, Lofgren's become a Zen master like Jeff Beck, but he still gets a laugh with a story about him and his high school guitar buddies trying to figure out what fuzzbox Keith Richards and Hendrix used, buying the pedal, "and it still didn't sound right."
Lou's lyrics ranged from altruistic ("Give") to hard-nosed ("Don't Let Your Guard Down"), while Lofgren demonstrated he's no slouch with "Too Blue To Play" (the tale of a traumatized war veteran who'd be at home in the darkness on the edge of Springsteen's town) and "Rock Or Not" (which casts a sardonic eye on the times we're living in). The rest of the set drew from the length and breadth of Lofgren's catalog, from the very first Grin LP ("Like Rain") to 1991's Silver Lining (the ebullient "Walking Nerve" that opened the set, and the tender "Girl In Motion," which Lofgren preceded with a story about his own sobriety and 20-years-and-counting marriage). "Big Tears Fall" from 1985's Flip provided a strong feature for Mizelle, after which Lofgren -- on piano -- essayed the version of Carole King's "Goin' Back" that was a highlight of his eponymous debut LP. And my ears perked up when the '77 FM radio staple "I Came To Dance" emerged from a singalong jam on the Temptations' "Papa Was A Rolling Stone."
After an hour and 45 minutes, Lofgren and band vacated the stage, only to return momentarily for the de rigueur encore "Shine Silently" (co-written for Nils with Ezrin studio mainstay/Detroit guitar legend Dick Wagner); my buddy and I figured that after playing decades of three-and-a-half hour shows with Springsteen, this was Nils' light work. Then we had to bounce back to Fort Worth, but it was an evening well spent with Mr. Lofgren. Maturity -- and the humility it can bring -- becomes him.
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