gig review: michael penn @ cafe du nord

[rone]

We got there late, so we only caught 4 or 5 songs of Jesse Sykes's act.  Her voice is like Hope Sandoval with Melissa Etheridge's scratchiness.  She played acoustic rhythm guitar with Phil Wandscher on lead electric, although some of the songs begged for a lap steel.  They were soft, dreamy songs and i liked them.

Michael Penn set up quickly and launched right into his first song with no preamble.  His show was short, but fun.  They took off at 65 minutes until the encore cries brought `em back, for a total time from start to finish of 80 minutes.

• Try
• Denton Road
• A Bad Sign
• High Time
• On Automatic
• Bunker Hill
• Out of My Hands
• O.K.
• Me Around
• Long Way Down (Look What the Cat Drug In) (this one had a couple of false starts)
• Don't Let Me Go
• Walter Reed
• Brave New World
  
  encore
  
  
• I Can Tell
• Figment
• No Myth

Before "Bunker Hill", he told the story about the Angels' Flight, the world's shortest railroad, designed to bring the gentry from Bunker Hill to the shops down the hill.  Before "Walter Reed", he talked about the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Donald Rumsfeld's plan to shut it down.

After "I Can Tell", i yelled out, "Play 'Figment'!"  He replied, "'Figment'? Dammit! That's one of the ones we haven't got quite down yet."  Then he reconsidered, put the capo on the first fret, and warned us that it would be a "train wreck."  It wasn't.  It was beautiful and it got the biggest applause of the set.  Do go see him if he's playing in your vicinity.

If you have Quicktime, you can stream his new album, Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947.  It's very good, but it's a bit short (13 tracks, but 3 of them are just goofy noise tracks).  And while i'm recommending music you can stream, if you want to listen to some high quality jazz/rock fusion, plug this URL into your Quicktime player to listen to Vernon Reid & Masque's Known Unknown.