LIVE: CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE with The Dave Brewer Trio – Perth, 26 Sep 2024

LIVE: CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE with The Dave Brewer Trio – Perth, 26 Sep 2024
The Astor Theatre, Perth, Western Australia
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar

With a voice like velvet-wrapped honey Dave Billing is singing Good Times Are Just Around The Corner, Johnny Wilson’s stand-up bass keeping immaculate time while Dave Brewer’s tastefully picked guitar is like a top shelf whiskey – fluid, charcoal mellowed and warming in the pit of your stomach.

Through Sweetest Man In Town, Satisfied, Runnin’ With That Man, Many A Fool Will Understand and more, these cats play subtle, tasteful, perfectly smooth blues. Brewer takes the mic for a few numbers, allowing Billing to blow his harp impressively – fittingly considering the man of the hour is arguably the most important and influential harmonica player of the modern blues.

And when the man appears on stage a short while later, he seems in fine form, perhaps the only concession for his advancing years – Charlie Musselwhite turned 80 in January, after all – being perched on a stool throughout the show. His trusty briefcase is open before him, from which he selects a succession of harmonicas – and we’re reminded that this is the man, supposedly, Dan Ackroyd based his Elwood Blues character and his ‘Briefcase of Blues’ upon.

“The blues is in the house tonight,” Musselwhite grins, checking with the crowd that his harp isn’t too loud, then launching into Wild, Wild Woman, River Hip Mama and the old Eddie Taylor tune Bad Boy.

Charlie’s band is amazing – the rhythm section of June Core – who’s been on drums with the boss for twenty years and who he calls his “best friend” – and bassist Randy Bermudes – are so locked together without needing to so much as glance at each other that they make it look easy even when we know for sure that it ain’t.

His other secret weapon is Kid Anderson, who may as well have flames erupting from his fingers, so fast and dextrous does he play his guitar when appropriate. Watching and hearing all four of these musicians is a treat, but it’s Charlie Musselwhite we’re here to see and his playing, his weathered leather vocals, and his gentlemanly charisma make the night perfect – everything else is just gravy in all its swampy, stompin’, smoke haze-filled barroom blues glory.

Blues Why Do You Worry Me, which the former moonshine runner declares is “a song loosely about my drinking career… which didn’t work out so well.” He’s never more endearing than when he adds with a chuckle, “I wouldn’t recommend it… any more.”

My Kinda Gal features another wild harp solo and – if possible – an even more wild guitar rip from big man Anderson.

When Musselwhite pauses for a few moments to reminisce about his time spent hanging with the legends Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson and more, you know he’s not name dropping or showing off: he’s lived long and hard, seen it all, done most of it, and written about it along the way. He tells a hilarious story about Muddy at a venue called The Pepper Club – “where I musta seen him 100 times” – using a shaken beer bottle stuffed down his trousers for illustrative purposes when performing I’m A Man. Other stories, he confesses, he can’t tell as they’d be inappropriate.

The story leads into Sonny Boy’s Help Me, which featured on Charlie’s debut record in 1966. Hey Miss Bessie – a typically thinly veiled risqué blues tune he released in 1991 – is “about barbecue… maybe” says Musselwhite, playing coy. “June Core says it is, but he’s vegetarian so what would he know!”

Stranger In A Strange Land – written aged eighteen when he first moved from Memphis to Chicago and released on his 1966 debut album – is a wonderful end to a wonderful set, before the band return for another track off that fifty-eight year old debut record, the soulful, emotional, timeless instrumental Christo Redempto.

Seeing Charlie Musselwhite in the flesh is to be in the presence of one of the last legends still standing. Some people have a strength, a charisma, an aura – a greatness – which radiates from them through a room.

Hearing him live – and with no disrespect I suggest that at his age we are forced to consider that it might be our last ever opportunity – is a privilege, an uplifting and exciting experience that carries with it the spirit of sixty-plus years of experience and a teensy bit of the essence of all those greats who he knew, played with and hung out with, from Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson, to Elvis Presley, Ben Harper, Tom Waits, Mick Jagger, Cat Stevens, INXS, The Blind Boys of Alabama and far beyond – and that makes the night not just a great gig, but also a little bit magical.

SET LIST:

Wild, Wild Woman (Johnny Young)
River Hip Mama
Bad Boy (Eddie Taylor)
River Hip Mama
Blues Why Do You Worry Me
My Kinda Gal
Help Me (Sonny Boy Williamson)
Good Blues Tonight
Hey Miss Bessie
Gone Too Long
I’m Going Home
Stranger In A Strange Land

Christo Redempto

 

 

Category: Live Reviews