71 and Still Having Fun

71 and Still Having Fun

This Fall has involved many things, including lots and lots of concerts….. my sister and I, and my wife too, are the music mavens…. we’ve gone to concerts by the Lexington Lab Band which brought 2,500 to the Ichthus grounds in Wilmore  to  hear  the  best   cover  band  in  the  land.

Even the heavens were enjoying this one the day before Labor Day.   Then two Thursdays later…. we got to go see Christopher Cross in the Lexington Opera House.

What was interesting about this concert is that Christopher was backed by jazz musicians, the pianist, the drummer, and the bass player were all from Paris, and the sax player was from Finland.  A good time was had by all three of us.

Then came the biggy later in September… Laura and I went to Bourbon and Beyond  in Louisville for the Friday and Saturday part of the Festival, with 1000,000 other people, and saw lots of acts we had never seen before…..  the music was great, but the heat was brutal…. 95 F and then some.  But we stayed from noon through 9 p.m. for 18 total hours of music…

Pay attention to the right half of that billboard to see who was there.   I would like to have seen homeboy Chris Stapleton Sunday night,  but we could only do two days…. but even though we weren’t there on Sunday, we saw an impressive performance by St. Paul and the Broken Bones…

And yes there were even some pyrotechnics at the Greta Van Fleet concert

To be honest we were not impressed with that band…. at all.   They were not even as good at trying to out Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin as the Lexington Lab Band.  They were simply loud and their singer was a screamer. Not impressive….

At the other end of the spectrum was Crowded House. (aka Neil and Liam Finn) and they were wonderful… and then they brought on one of their biggest fans, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, who came on and sang a couple of the big tunes of Crowded House with them…

Neil Finn singing their big hit… Don’t Dream It’s Over

The flashiest of the shows was that of St. Vincent, a young lady from Tulsa who had three great soul singers backing her up, and a good guitar player as well…

In general, the acts fronted by women were impressive including the one above, but Elle King the blues singer was very good, if you like the blues, as was Eric Gale also a blues singer and guitar player…

There were some excellent country acts as well…. especially the son of Willie Nelson. Lukas Nelson and the Promise of the Real

Charlie Crockett and his cowboys were very good if you like traditional Hank Williams kind of country…

Jason Isabell from Muscle Shoals was quite good, a notch above his former band The Drive Band Truckers who played the following night…

Belinda Carlisle was good as one of the two headliners Friday Night….

Matilda Marigold was a newcomer who opened the show Saturday.. and we met and talked with her mom…. she was not bad, sounded a bit like Alanis Morrisette. 

She’s only 19 and just starting to tour….  and the opening act of Friday was Jocelyn and Chris, a brother and sister act who had just graduated from Harvard were really good as rockers…. and she had the best voice of all the women singers both days…

J.P. Saxe from Canada was also good— similar to Ed Sheeran and even a red head too.

There was even a throwback hippie act called the National Parks….

A good time was had by Laura and myself, even in the sweltering heat….


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