Dr. John ~ 2005 August 12 ~ Lowell Summer Music Series, Lowell, MA
Review
I had seen Dr. John once before, a long time ago in my Pub Crawling Youth, at the old Jonathan Swift's nightclub on Boylston Street (now JFK Street) in Harvard Square, Cambridge. I thought it was time to see him again.
The Lowell Summer Music Series is a summer-long festival of mostly big-name live music, presented in the outdoor Boardinghouse Park in this northern Massachusetts city. The location gets its name from the historic boarding houses adjacent to the park, where the mill girls who worked in the Lowell cotton factories in the nineteenth century resided. The park is a spacious, terraced open air park, ideal for a concert on a hot summer night. Concert goers bring lawn chairs and blankets and it's first come, first served in terms of seating.
The show was opened by Kweejeebo, a jazz/funk 6-piece band from the host city, Lowell.
Dr. John may not be as spry physically as the previous time I saw him, some 30 years ago, but his fingers on the keyboard are just as supple. He played about 16 songs, switching from a grand piano to an electric keyboard, accompanied by an accomplished band featuring drums, guitar, bass, and horns. The music had elements of funk and jazz along with the signature New Orleans piano sound. His vocals still have that pleasantly sly texture, as if he's about to spring some surprise on you. His voice is deep and rich, and between songs he told stories about his long career in music and had the audience entranced. Of course he played his radio hit, "Right Place Wrong Time," but my favorites were the swamp tunes, songs like "Walk on Gilded Splinters," "Dr. John the Night Tripper," and the Orleans piano blues like the encore song, "Mess Around," a cover of a tune by the great Professor Longhair.
His piano was decorated with colored streamers, and Dr. John looked quite stylish in a blue suit and a light-colored porkpie hat with a hatband. A couple of times during the latter part of the show he got up from his piano stool and danced a few steps of a Mr. Bojangles-style soft shoe dance. The crowd loved him, and there was a lot of dancing in the aisles to some of the funky songs.
Even after all these years in music, Dr. John (real name Mac Rebennack) still can use his powerful musical magic to transport an audience to a Louisiana bayou where all their cares are forgotten for just one night.