Willie Nile ~ 2026 June 14 ~ Small Batch Cellars, North Haven, CT Band personnel: Willie Nile (vocals, guitar), Johnny Pisano (bass, vocals), Jimi K Bones (guitar, vocals), Jon Weber (drums). Set List Welcome To My Head - Wild Wild World - Golden Down - Game Of Fools - We Are, We Are - Trouble Down in Diamond Town - She's Got My Heart - Fall On Me - Give Me Tomorrow - You Gotta Be A Buddha (In A Place Like This) - Irish Goodbye - New York Is Rockin' - Sweet Jane {Lou Reed} - House of a Thousand Guitars - Run Free ... encore ... One Guitar - Blowin' in the Wind {Dylan} very rocked up version Videos
Welcome To My Head
She's Got My Heart
Run Free
Review This was such a good set list, jumping creatively to all the smooth corners of this amazing songwriter's long career. "Irish Goodbye" and "We Are, We Are" from the recent album, the title of which, Great Yellow Light, is a nod to French painter Van Gogh (maybe a bit too intellectual for a typical rock audience). But then there's the singing along, and Willie's praise of his 108 1/2 year old father's humility, and his pushing joy and enthusiasm as counteracting what's wrong with the world. I in particular liked hearing "Golden Down," title track from his second album, using the Wayback machine to visit 1980. Willie humorously dedicated "Fall On Me" to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, claiming they were at the show -- they weren't, but they could have learned something about how to rock if they had been. A perfect opening song for a late afternoon of rock 'n roll was "Welcome To My Head," the opening track from Willie's 2017 album that was an ode to the city that never sleeps, Streets of New York. Who else writes a song invoking the Dalai Lama, Busby Berkeley, the devil, and Frankenstein all in the same three minutes? Another ode to New York was "New York Is Rockin'," dedicated to the NY Knicks' NBA championship, which drew a few good-natured boos from the crowd, proving that New Haven is east of that invisible dividing line in Connecticut, east of which the populace roots for the Boston sports teams and west of which they root for the NY sports teams! It's a great song, however!
This was our thirty-fifth Willie Nile show overall and the third time we'd seen him at an outdoor venue. This venue definitely suited him. The boy does like his wine and he was enjoying sipping a glass while performing, and sharing a joke about it with (teetotaling) Johnny Pisano on bass. Willie loves to praise this great band, and they sure are good, Johnny, Jon, and Jimi, and let's not forget Kathy the merch girl who gets them to the gigs on time and works behind the scenes to get this all together.
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Jimi, Jon, Willie, Johnny
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of the concert