Music review: The Guess Who’s Burton Cummings brings the soul to Spokane after long legal battle over performance rights

Burton Cummings is one of those rock singers so skilled, so soulful, you’d forgive The Guess Who frontman if he made his voice alone his instrument.

After all, these are the gritty, yet surprisingly agile, vocals that helped propel the Canadian rock band to stardom with hits like “No Time,” “These Eyes,” “No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature” and, of course, “American Woman.”

So when Cummings took the Spokane Tribe Casino stage Saturday night, it was refreshing to see the Winnipeg, Manitoba, native accompany himself with guitar, harmonica, tambourine, flute (his technique, he acknowledged, might be “kind of questionable,” but he said he didn’t want to skip the song) and a not-questionable-in-the-slightest blues keyboard (seriously, the man can play). And it’s all the more impressive considering he already had a skilled five-piece band backing him.

Kicking off with the upbeat “Bus Rider,” the show had no opening act, which – admittedly for this reviewer – was also refreshing. Whether that was a logistical matter or a no-nonsense reading of the room (mostly an older crowd who perhaps wouldn’t want to be kept out too late), it was exhilarating to see the man of the hour and his band roll out onto the stage so suddenly, rather than lacking in suspense like you might expect without a buildup.

Dressed in a black button-down emblazoned with patches honoring fellow rock icons Queen, The Doors and Alice Cooper – cool to get a peek at Cummings’ own apparent musical taste – the 77-year-old is not shy about acknowledging the mark he and his band have left on radio over the past 50 years (starting “way back in the Jurassic era of the early 1970s,” Cummings joked).

Later, he poked a little good-natured fun at the Lennon to his McCartney (or the McCartney to his Lennon?), ex-bandmate Randy Bachman, by praising the moody “Undun” as the best song Bachman ever wrote – “without a cowriter.” That was the number that necessitated Cummings’ flute solo, which he delivered in a seamless transition from some scatting.

“You know, sometimes the music gods just smile down on you a little bit,” he remarked to the crowd.

He’s also not shy giving praise when it’s due elsewhere, like in introducing ex-bandmate Kurt Winter’s “Hand Me Down World.”

“I am able to say without bragging what a great song this is because I didn’t write it,” he quipped, before recalling the day Winter first played him the defiant anthem.

It’s always fun at live shows to hear some of the behind-the-scenes stories like that about how an act’s most beloved songs came to be, with Cummings later telling the crowd how he still lived at home with his mother and grandmother in Winnipeg when Bachman came over one day and they wrote the wistful, soaring ballad that arguably launched them to superstardom: “These Eyes.”

“Life was never the same after this,” he said. “Took about an hour and a half, changed our lives forever.”

Cummings mostly stuck to The Guess Who’s many gold-certified hits, though artists often squeeze in quite a few songs it seems they want to play more than the audience paid to hear – you can’t call Cummings tone deaf literally or figuratively, it turns out.

The back-to-basics setlist was fitting for a band that for years was beset with infighting and legal battles over performance rights, with Cummings and Bachman on the same side of a lawsuit against two other original bandmates over a later iteration of the group that used the band’s original name and songs without Cummings and Bachman.

But Cummings also performed some material from his new album, “A Few Good Moments,” (the catchy “Blackjack Fever,” fitting for the location, had the crowd picking up the chorus quickly and singing along), as well as a fun rendition of The Kingsmen’s classic “Louie, Louie” (which originated here in the Pacific Northwest, Cummings pointed out).

The show wrapped with “Share the Land,” an idealistic anthem from “the hippie days” that had the audience waving their arms in unison as Cummings riffed and his band chanted in harmony the poignant refrain, “Shake your hand/share the land.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated on Jan. 27, 2025, to correct details on Cummings’ and Bachman’s legal battle with former bandmates over performance rights.