Weeks ago I had a look at the music program for November and December to
find out that three shows were going to take place the same day and at
the same time. This disgusting coincidence seemed strange to me because
there are two things that are out of any question: first, it is not
cheap to bring a band from abroad to performance in a small island and
second, there are not enough people in this town to grant a minimum
audience to attend each of any of those three shows. Jazz or blues music
do not have many “supporters” over here, in fact, I always see the same
faces and the same people in most of the shows I usually go to, so we
were forced to choose between Polo Ortí Quintet, who was going to play
along with vibraphonist Gary Burton, the MGT Guitarists Trio, (MGT
stands for Wolfgang Muthspiel, Slava Grigoryan y Ralph Towner) and
finally, Lady Dottie and The Diamonds, a Californian band from San
Diego.
So after a while our decision was taken. Lady Dottie and The Diamonds got our curiosity, mainly because we wanted to check out how this combination between a 66 years old black woman and four long haired white guys (4 melenudos blancos) in their thirties would work. I guess we did the right election. There was not an empty seat in the hall.
As always, we had a couple of beers at the Hotel Madrid bar just before the show, you know, to warm up our muscles.
The show started off on time. At 20.30 hours Joey Guevara piano, harmonica and vocals, Stephen Rey on bass guitar, Nathan Beale on guitar, Richard Larson on drums stepped on to the stage and with the first chords, we had Lady Dottie in front of us.
Since the very first track they performed we saw ourselves in front of a powerful band that delivered a compact and superb sound. Quickly, the hall was loaded with a high explosion of non adulterer blues and rock and roll that went always in crescendo through out the whole show.
Fender musical instruments ruled the performance.
Guitarist Nathan Beale played a Telecaster, plugged into a Fender Twin Reverb that displayed the thin, flat, slender tone that that particular axe can deliver and even when I’m more on Gibson guitars tone, I swear that if I ever own a Fender guitar, it would be a Telecaster.
Bassist Stephen Rey played a four strings Fender Jazz Bass plugged into a 4x10 Ampeg cabinet.
The whole band showed a superb playing technique and a very important mutual understanding.
Beale executed powerful solos filled up with intuition and accuracy, riffs and bendings that he melted down with a fresh guitar phrasing, that invited the audience to do everything but remained sat in their seats.
Lady Dottie and The Diamonds pushed us to stand up and……..dance! I swear I found very few people that were not dancing/moving in their seats
I also found out that Beale only used two or three fx’s pedals, distortion and delay among them, transmitting the feeling of the early rock and roll from the Fifties.
IMO the best of his solos were those he performed using saturated tones played through a fast, instinctive and straight powerful fretwork.
Joey Guevara seemed to me a superb player, not only on keyboards but on harmonica too. Quiet and intense, he showed a sweet phrasing, attacking with sensibility the different tracks they performed. He also did the chorus, which wasn’t an easy task due to the very powerful Lady Dottie’s bass tone voice he had to cover.
The rhythmic section, perfectly disciplined, showed an accurate performance too.
Stephen Rey on bass –who stepped on the stage wearing sun glasses- did a good job. But anyway, both, bassist and drummer, did a correct job altough they didn’t have the chance for soloing as Beale and Guevara did.
The concert was well planned. IMHO one hour and a half of non stop blues or non stop rockabilly music might bore the audience, so the musicians do have to be very careful regarding the way they plan the concert and Lady Dottie and
The Diamonds were aware of this fact: they first played a blues song, followed by a rock and roll tune, a blues track and then a rock and roll one, so they kept the audience’s attention for the whole show.
And finally Lady Dottie. IMO she was the best.
Born Dorothy Mae Whitsett, in Alabama, a woman whose father worked three jobs and carried his kids to the picking fields in the family’s only source of transportation—a mule and buggy. A woman who quit school after the eighth grade to raise her 12 brothers and sisters and then, at 16, was carried off to the chicken factory by her mother.
Lady Dottie owns a superb curriculum vitae: she has collaborated with The Rolling Stones, Ike and Tina, Kool and The Gang, Muddy Waters, Budy Holly, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, Ottis Redding, Little Richard and folks, after the show I understood why these amazing bunch of artists wanted her to work with them.
She stepped on the stage as a hurricane, only armed with her amazing and powerful voice. Just one tonal range with no significant vocal modulations but folks, what an spectacular tone voice. Sometimes she reminded me James Brown’s voice, sometimes I felt I was listening to Tina Turner.
Lady Dottie is a true blueswoman deeply rooted in Gospel music that performed warm, hearty blues and soul tracks melted with rock and roll songs perfectly executed, thanks to her solid and strong voice.
The show went on with one track after another 'till we reached the end of it, after more than two hours of a non stop blues and rock and roll session.
I gotta admit I had a good time with this Californian band. I had the chance to enjoy a very nice show where musicians did a great job and the only mistake I found was that volume was a bit loud; there was a hiss in my ears when we left the hall.
So after a while our decision was taken. Lady Dottie and The Diamonds got our curiosity, mainly because we wanted to check out how this combination between a 66 years old black woman and four long haired white guys (4 melenudos blancos) in their thirties would work. I guess we did the right election. There was not an empty seat in the hall.
As always, we had a couple of beers at the Hotel Madrid bar just before the show, you know, to warm up our muscles.
The show started off on time. At 20.30 hours Joey Guevara piano, harmonica and vocals, Stephen Rey on bass guitar, Nathan Beale on guitar, Richard Larson on drums stepped on to the stage and with the first chords, we had Lady Dottie in front of us.
Since the very first track they performed we saw ourselves in front of a powerful band that delivered a compact and superb sound. Quickly, the hall was loaded with a high explosion of non adulterer blues and rock and roll that went always in crescendo through out the whole show.
Fender musical instruments ruled the performance.
Guitarist Nathan Beale played a Telecaster, plugged into a Fender Twin Reverb that displayed the thin, flat, slender tone that that particular axe can deliver and even when I’m more on Gibson guitars tone, I swear that if I ever own a Fender guitar, it would be a Telecaster.
Bassist Stephen Rey played a four strings Fender Jazz Bass plugged into a 4x10 Ampeg cabinet.
The whole band showed a superb playing technique and a very important mutual understanding.
Beale executed powerful solos filled up with intuition and accuracy, riffs and bendings that he melted down with a fresh guitar phrasing, that invited the audience to do everything but remained sat in their seats.
Lady Dottie and The Diamonds pushed us to stand up and……..dance! I swear I found very few people that were not dancing/moving in their seats
I also found out that Beale only used two or three fx’s pedals, distortion and delay among them, transmitting the feeling of the early rock and roll from the Fifties.
IMO the best of his solos were those he performed using saturated tones played through a fast, instinctive and straight powerful fretwork.
Joey Guevara seemed to me a superb player, not only on keyboards but on harmonica too. Quiet and intense, he showed a sweet phrasing, attacking with sensibility the different tracks they performed. He also did the chorus, which wasn’t an easy task due to the very powerful Lady Dottie’s bass tone voice he had to cover.
The rhythmic section, perfectly disciplined, showed an accurate performance too.
Stephen Rey on bass –who stepped on the stage wearing sun glasses- did a good job. But anyway, both, bassist and drummer, did a correct job altough they didn’t have the chance for soloing as Beale and Guevara did.
The concert was well planned. IMHO one hour and a half of non stop blues or non stop rockabilly music might bore the audience, so the musicians do have to be very careful regarding the way they plan the concert and Lady Dottie and
The Diamonds were aware of this fact: they first played a blues song, followed by a rock and roll tune, a blues track and then a rock and roll one, so they kept the audience’s attention for the whole show.
And finally Lady Dottie. IMO she was the best.
Born Dorothy Mae Whitsett, in Alabama, a woman whose father worked three jobs and carried his kids to the picking fields in the family’s only source of transportation—a mule and buggy. A woman who quit school after the eighth grade to raise her 12 brothers and sisters and then, at 16, was carried off to the chicken factory by her mother.
Lady Dottie owns a superb curriculum vitae: she has collaborated with The Rolling Stones, Ike and Tina, Kool and The Gang, Muddy Waters, Budy Holly, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, Ottis Redding, Little Richard and folks, after the show I understood why these amazing bunch of artists wanted her to work with them.
She stepped on the stage as a hurricane, only armed with her amazing and powerful voice. Just one tonal range with no significant vocal modulations but folks, what an spectacular tone voice. Sometimes she reminded me James Brown’s voice, sometimes I felt I was listening to Tina Turner.
Lady Dottie is a true blueswoman deeply rooted in Gospel music that performed warm, hearty blues and soul tracks melted with rock and roll songs perfectly executed, thanks to her solid and strong voice.
The show went on with one track after another 'till we reached the end of it, after more than two hours of a non stop blues and rock and roll session.
I gotta admit I had a good time with this Californian band. I had the chance to enjoy a very nice show where musicians did a great job and the only mistake I found was that volume was a bit loud; there was a hiss in my ears when we left the hall.
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