Concert Wrap — G. Love & Special Sauce @ The AMP, Aug. 26
As a matter of smart showmanship, a headliner should NEVER, under any circumstance, have an opening act that has the potential to upstage them.
Unfortunately for Garrett Dutton, aka G. Love, he chose poorly when selecting the John Butler Trio.
To credit G. Love & Special Sauce, his set was an exercise in fine, fun hip-hop/funk/blues/whatever else you want to call it. But it would have taken a Herculean effort to match the enthusiasm, energy and breathtaking musicianship displayed by the John Butler Trio during its 75 minute hurricane of a set. More on them later.
During his band’s 90-minute set on Aug. 26 at the Arkansas Music Pavilion in Fayetteville, G. Love played a mix of old and new, and a mix of songs that were his own and those that weren’t.
Click the ‘more’ link below to read the full review and see more photos from Tuesday night’s concert.
For instance, he played a Jack Johnson song, “Rodeo Clowns,” and also played The Beatles’ “Blackbird.” He closed the evening with a cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” with assistance from the John Butler Trio and Tristan Prettyman, the SoCal songstress who opened the concert.
As a performer, G. Love, a Philly native who has been performing for more than 20 years, is as goofy as his clothes were black: He danced, rapped and pranced about the stage, at one time using his microphone to play slide.
There are times that whimsy plays to his advantage, such as on “Whose Got The Weed,” a song as fun and silly as he is. But conversely, it simply doesn’t work on tracks such as “Superhero Brother,” which is the title track from his most recent album. Before playing it, he introduced it as his “political song,” but it sounds more like an effort to name drop as many famous personas (Jesus, President George W. Bush, Brittney Spears, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Spiderman are among them) as it is to actually say something important.
Unfortunately for G. Love and his group of talented bandmates, he was made the anticlimax before he ever stepped onstage.
On an 11-string guitar for much of the evening, Butler impressed with his unique picking, a self-made style that utilizes his filed-down fingernails to catch the guitar (or banjo) strings in rapid procession.
From my vantage point 4 feet from the performer (close enough to see he was wearing funky gray and brown argyle socks), watching what he was doing on guitar was a full-time job. I can’t help but guess that some of the 1,200 or so fans who attended the show but were farther away from the stage missed a little bit of that magic.
Butler, born in the United States but now a resident of Australia, tried every rock star cliché (jumping from the drum riser, a call-and-response, begging for claps, etc …) in the book, but these things were forgiven, even rewarded, for his enthusiasm in doing so.
Highlights include the blistering slide guitar effort of “Treat Yo Mama” and the singalong that erupted during “Use To Get High,” his second song of the evening.
He also indulged himself, if briefly, asking the audience to sing “Happy Birthday” to his 2-year-old son, who was backstage at the time. He’d already rewarded the crowd, and they were happy to give back.
Before his band’s set was Tristan Prettyman, a San Diego-based pop star, who, unlike some of her contemporaries, actually bothered to play guitar while onstage. When she began the show at 7 p.m., she was playing for a crowd of perhaps a few dozen.
Her songs are a reflection of her geographic location and pastime, as her music is best classified as SoCal surf pop. As the crowd filed in, she drew them forward, closing with a couple tracks from her new album.
And then, she turned things over to Butler.
Who later, in his Australian accent, would tell the crowd in his closing song, “Funky Tonight,”: “If there’s something wrong, yes, you know I’m gonna try to make it right.”
It was prophecy: It certainly was hard not to feel good when he was playing.
Set lists, as pulled from the stage:
G. Love & Special Sauce:
John Butler Trio:
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