Rockin’ In The Rain Brian Setzer, 17-Piece Group Transform Concert Into Celebration Of Big-Band Sound
Brian Setzer Orchestra Sunday, Aug. 4, Festival at Sandpoint
Rain accomplished something Sunday that some great musicians haven’t: It turned a Sandpoint Festival concert into a party.
Brian Setzer and his big band had just swung into a brassy version of “Route 66”’ when the skies opened.
“We could bring it in and make it intimate,” the tattooed rocker suggested, motioning the crowd forward. Half the crowd rushed for shelter under the big tent that covers the stage, and the show never looked back. Setzer’s 17-piece big band turned up the heat on “Route 66,” and those in the crowd down front cut loose, singing and dancing and waving their arms in the air.
Brian Setzer, former Stray Cat, is one-part rockabilly guitar hero, one part show-band leader and one part crooner from the Bobby Darrin school. He even married Herb Ellis to Les Paul with a swinging guitar solo that proved the rocker went to school on the jazz book.
In the ‘80s, Setzer gave rockabilly a new twist. Now he breathes new life into big-band show music, recalling the ‘40s when Johnnie Otis and others turned big bands into cranking R&B machines.
But Setzer revamps even that tradition, using early rock as fodder - think the theme from the “Peter Gunn” TV show with a big band and with an electric guitar as lead instrument. Some pieces sounded a little like TV theme tunes from the ‘50s, when the networks still employed house bands.
The music is bright and shiny. It rocks hard and occasionally swings, though it’s really more about dazzling surfaces than the textures and poly rhythms that give depth to the best big-band music.
The saxophones were mixed high Sunday to add brassiness rather than their usual mellow complexity. The stand-up bass was placed far forward in the mix, pounding the beat alongside the drums.
Clad in a red tartan suit, skinny shades and a big hoop earring, Setzer led his lively group through a set of original materials and covers.
Best were two pieces involving the Clash’s Joe Strummer: the Setzer/Strummer-penned “Rumble In Brighton” and the Clash’s “Brand New Cadillac.” Both songs had an edge missing from Setzer’s normally sunny music.
, DataTimes