This week’s Saturday musical photo essay features Steve Earle and the Dukes who played the Bijou Theatre Thursday night. As always when accompanied by the Dukes, the night was rocking, but this time with more of a blues tilt. Steve’s most recent album is filled with his versions of blues songs and he kept the focus on that genre through the night, playing a large number of cuts from the most recent disk.
The night opened with the Mastersons, a husband/wife duo who are currently members in the Dukes. After an intermission, a Robert Johnson song played just before Steve took the stage. His harmonica playing was good, but may have suffered by comparison to the Blues Traveler show just a few days ago. As my friend stated, “He ain’t no John Popper, but then, who is?” Pretty good summation, though Steve stayed within his strengths on the instrument and the additional time devoted to the harmonica added to the evening sound.
Well played was his decision to get “Copperhead Road” out of the way early to prevent the drunks from yelling it all night. The show also featured two encores, which included surprising versions of “Wild Thing” by the Troggs (or Chip Taylor if you want to get technical) and a very surprising “There is a Mountain,” by Donovan.
True to form for these Saturday posts, I’ll stop talking and let you enjoy the photo essay. I’ll post many more photos from the show on the Inside of Knoxville Facebook page sometime later, so watch for that.
