No, they weren’t in concert together. John Hiatt appeared with his new backup trio, the Useless Beauties, at the packed Pantages. He never gives a bad show, and this one was good but not great. Hiatt was his usual humorous and likable self but the band was too relaxed, missing the intensity of previous Hiatt ensembles such as the North Mississippi Allstars or the Goners (especially disappointing was the restrained finale “Thing Called Love”).

Hiatt did several tunes from his new CD, “Same Old Man.” The best one was “Old Days,” in which he reminisced about his early touring days opening for John Lee Hooker, Mose Allison and Gatemouth Brown. He delivered it with a voice that evoked Randy Newman’s if he’d spent his salad days in smokey clubs. Hiatt’s influences were often obvious. He admitted to copping a Neil Diamond rhythm for “Slow Turning” (which actually sounded almost Monkees-like; yes, Neil wrote “I’m a Believer”). Other songs evoked the Stones and Dylan. Still, a good time was had by all.

Impressive was unadvertised opener Molly Maher, the local singer-songwriter who is becoming more and more like Lucinda Williams. That’s a good thing. Maher’s closing tune, which I think is called “I’ll Forget About You,” was a great song delivered before one of the great songwriters took the stage. Maher’s tune has country hit written all over it.

After two hours of Hiatt, I headed over to the Dakota to catch the last 35 minutes of The E Family, featuring Sheila E. Sitting in on vocals was, as her father Pete Escovedo said: “St. Paul Peterson Escovedo.” What a fun and first-rate party band! Sheila encored with a solo drums-and-voice version of “Glamorous Life” and then did “A Love Bizarre” and the Family’s “Screams of Passion” with Paul. Maybe they’ll do “Nothing Compares 2 U” tonight (Sunday). I’ll be there to check it out.

What did you think of the shows? Please post your comments here:

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Concerts, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.