I recently read how the first ever rock ’n’ roll concert was 65 years ago, officially making the genre a senior citizen.
Despite not even being a twinkle in my daddy’s eye when the Moondog Coronation Ball was held, I’ve got a pretty good idea of what it must have been like to be there – The sheer excitement of witnessing something revolutionary, hearing music your parents warned you about that sped up traditional country and blues with rhythms only known previously to African-Americans, performed by ragtag outfits with unusual names, inciting uninhibited dancing and wild behaviour in teenagers that made a lot of people very, very nervous.
I don’t know if it’s fair to call Dan Auerbach a modern-day Alan Freed (minus the payola scandal and raging alcoholism that led to his early death), but the Easy Eye Sound Revue that pulled into Toronto’s historic Danforth Music Hall definitely had a novel feeling of old and new coming together.
On the surface, this is a tour for Auerbach’s second solo album Waiting on a Song that seemingly flew under the radar last year, a welcomed breath of fresh air after progressively psychedelic efforts with The Black Keys and additional side project The Arcs. While not quite sugar-sugary bubblegum pop, there is a deliberate channelling of feel-good vibes that has everything to do with the experienced crew assembled by the not-yet 40-year-old Auerbach to create lasting memories among impressionable music fans.
Besides utility axeman Dante Schwebel, from the band Hacienda who last joined up with Auerbach in 2009 on the Keep It Hid cycle, his other players’ average age would put those of The Rolling Stones to shame. Drummer Bubba Chrisman and keyboardist Bobby Wood – partners for more than 50 years in The Memphis Boys – are the oldest of old school session musicians who Auerbach specifically chose because they performed on some of his most loved records, including “Sweet Caroline” and “Son of a Preacher Man”. You’re apparently never too old to swing, rock or sweat, which is exactly what the Easy Eye Sound Revue made the range of generations in attendance do to songs not everyone may have been familiar with, but grooved along with as if they were lifelong favourites.
Shannon Shaw was visibly won over by how she and her breezy surf openers in The Clams were made to feel right at home so far away from their California base. Legally blind soulster Robert Finley also got a rapturous reception, and not just because of his fabulous fire engine red cowboy getup. For all the festival headline appearances and sold-out arenas he has to his name, Auerbach has never seemed comfortable as a “rockstar”, allowed to phone it in every once in awhile. He revels in continually working hard to earn audience adulation. Damn you Dan and your easy-going swagger – Damn. You!
With no offence meant to anyone who had gone to the Blue Jays’ first game of 2018 or Lorde’s melodramatic Toronto stop, the 1,500 or so gathered on the Danforth were truly part of something special.
