Project Description

THE ROBERT CRAY BAND

+ The Continental Blues Band

@ The Enmore Theatre

(Live Review)

16/5/18

Reviewer: Robert Farnan

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The Continental Blues Band laid an excellent, mood-setting blues platform that the four-man Robert Cray Band walked on to in front of an eager audience at The Enmore Theatre.

With minimal fanfare, Cray launched into Bill Withers’ The Same Love That Made Me Laugh, signalling the band’s intent to play partially from their 2017 album, Robert Cray and Hi Rhythm.

It took only one song for some in the audience to give a standing ovation, while the rest whistled and applauded with vigour. What a massive opening.

Having waited for the applause to die down, Cray, deadpan, approached the microphone: “Thank you. We are the Stones.”

This humour set the standard for the rest of the night. Between songs, Cray offered a couple of witty, often ribald, remarks to introduce the next song. A storyteller, Cray’s songs are strong in themes of relationships, desire, sex betrayal, heartache and sometimes happiness.

Poor Johnny preceded the Mississippi Sheiks’ oft-covered Sittin’ on Top of the World. The former teased an iconic Cray solo and the latter delivered.

Cray’s songs generally harness the keyboard and organ as a rhythm section, but in Sittin’ on Top of the World, pianist Dover Weinberg let loose, filling the auditorium with his eerily mesmerising sound.

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Memorable as that was, it was only the prelude to a massive Robert Cray guitar solo punctuated with piercingly high notes and facial contortionism that is such a recognisable part of his performance.

Fix This and On The Road Down, upbeat songs about the break down of relationships, were soulful and uplifting.

Soulful expression remained but reflection and lamentation replaced inspiration as Cray moved into themes reflecting on his younger days of hedonism and womanising at a slower tempo.

Aspen, Colorado, an ode to a simple life from the new album, and Right Next Door (Because of Me), a negative self-examination about an affair Cray had (but also a massive hit), acted in perfect contrast.

Right Next Door’s heart-wrenching guitar solo followed the simplistic lyrics and gentle chords of Aspen. As Cray attacked his strings (his guitar got a serious workout), his face mirrored the anguish in the song and earned another standing ovation at the end of the song.

The encore excellently concluded the performance thematically as heartache was replaced by the rekindling of desire in I Shiver and a belief in relationships in Time Makes Two.

I left the Enmore Theatre thoroughly entertained by Cray’s powerful and soulful voice and lyrics that lingered long in my mind, content in knowing that I had seen the great Robert Cray live and it was even more than I had hoped for.

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