With Bryn and Billy Bright

At the Great American Music Hall

San Francisco, CA, June 22, 2004

Review by Ted Silverman

According to onstage comments from Peter Rowan, it had been five years since he’d last performed at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall. Tony Rice acknowledged, with an affirming nod that it had been more than 20 years since he’d last appeared at this venerable theater. Interestingly, the Music hall was ground zero in the development of ‘Dawg-Music’, the hybrid offspring of string jazz and bluegrass co-developed by Tony Rice with David Grisman & Co. In the ensuing years since the heady days of Old & In The Way and the salad days of Dawg Music, both Peter Rowan and Tony Rice have followed their own respective muse as songwriters, instrumentalists and conduits of the hallowed traditions of bluegrass music. Their musical collaboration brought forth a capacity crowd to witness the synergistic possibilities resulting form the combination of perhaps America’s finest bluegrass singer songwriters with one of its predominant instrumentalists.

Ably abetted by the rhythm section of Billy and Bryn Bright, on mandolin and bass, this quartet produced a comforting cross-section of classic chestnuts, brand new material and number of intriguing nuggets from deep the song bag of Peter Rowan.

With a quick set change, following the opener of quartet singer/guitarist Pam Brandon and fiddler Chad Manning, Peter Rowan and Tony Rice, with Billy and Bryn Bright (their nattily-dressed rhythm section) took the stage and were welcomed with wild anticipatory applause. They hit the ground running with a pair of Rowan classics, Panama Red, followed by The Hobo Song. Then, with an abrupt turn toward the future, the quartet played the title track from their new CD You Were There For Me, which is slated for release summer ’04 on Rounder Records.

Other highlights of the set included Billy Bright’s modal, middle-eastern-sounding instrumental Jerusalem Café, named for an all-night Denver eatery that is a favorite of these touring professionals. Next came the one-two punch of the Rowan-Monroe classic Walls of Time, followed by the traditional classic Cold Rain and Snow. Billy Bright did a great job alternating between a solid chopping rhythm and some surprisingly deft mandolin work, while Bryn Bright showed a confident mastery of the upright bass in combination with beautifully performed close-harmony vocal work which cloaked Peter Rowan’s lead vocals like a bedspread over a tightly-made bed.

Tony Rice earned the crowd’s favor with his unique guitar style heavy-laden with suspended 4^th, ninth chords and horn-like runs. Rice complimented the underlying harmonic construction of Rowan’s tunes with a stylistic improvisational approach that never intruded on the melody. Midway through the set, in a duet with Bryn Bright, Rice’s impressionistic style of riffing morphed into the gorgeous minor key motif of George Gershwin’s Summertime. Once of the most appealing aspects of Rice in this context, was the flowing cascade of notes that concluded those songs he was given to cap-off. In these contexts the extended fusillade of notes is akin to that of a sax player given full freedom to express his emotions musically. Indeed, Rice has covered some of John Coltrane’s tunes and has cited Eric Dolphy as an influence.

Following this distinct musical interlude Peter Rowan returned to the stage to deliver the ever-evolving story of the Free Mexican Airforce, complete with it’s ganja-inspired subtext, rough-hewn but crusty characters, humorous quips at our current commander in chief and the ever present twinkle in Peter Rowan’s eyes. Rowan’s compositional tendencies are visualizations of the American West. He employs metaphoric constructs to carry on the principles of traditional songcraft using the landscape, characters and setting of each song to embed themes of loss, heartbreak, death and work. In keeping with this thematic concept, he delivered Come Back to Old Santa Fe, Ride the Wild Mustang, and one of his most well loved songs, Midnight Moonlight, with sincerity and heartfelt conviction. The musical underpinnings provided by the Brights and the flowing, lyrical melodic counterpoint of Tony Rice’s guitar combine to form a sublimely pleasant listening experience.

Much to the delight of the crowd, which was populated by a great number of members of local bluegrass bands, Chad Manning was invited to the stage for the second encore. Vassar Clements classic The Lonesome Fiddle Blues was given the kind of treatment that leaves audiences screaming for more. Tony Rice uttered a guttural “YEAH!” upon the conclusion of Chad Manning’s first fiddle solo, which seemed to suggest that acknowledgement from Rice is warm welcome from the upper echelons of the bluegrass community. Indeed the ecstatic audience managed to urge the band back for a third encore – a tasty, hot-blooded rendering of classic instrumental Salt Creek.

This evening’s performance showed why Peter Rowan is an American legend. He combines the skills of a consummate showman with material that stands the test of time alongside freshly rendered ideas and skillful delivery. The presence of Tony Rice was icing on this musical cake. His instrumental prowess weaves in and out of Rowan’s music, adding jazzy melodic diversions, intriguing suspended inventions and his commanding ‘G Run’, without ever weighing down Rowan’s songs. Billy Bright finds the right rhythmic spaces to fill with his rhythm and is capable of eliciting “wows!” with his subtle, but skillful lead breaks, while Bryn Bright’s confidence on bass and well-tempered harmony vocal work gives Rowan a wide-open landscape to fill with lyric imagery.