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Review: Myles Kennedy, Thekla
What’s a guy to do when he’s renowned for having one of the great rock voices and that instrument lets him down? Why sing everything in the lowest possible register as a tongue-in-cheek “tribute to Barry White”, of course. Alter Bridge frontman and Slash sidekick Myles Kennedy has been responsible for some patchy material, as he freely acknowledges tonight, but there’s no question about his vocal abilities. In one of the great ‘what if..?’ moments of rock history, he was chosen by Jimmy Page to front the post-reunion Led Zeppelin after Robert Plant made it clear that he was not prepared to continue, taking part in rehearsals before the project was abandoned. Tonight’s gig, the smallest on Kennedy’s solo UK tour, sold out within minutes and the vultures on those scalping websites are demanding silly money for tickets.
So anticipation is naturally high among the throng packed aboard the Thekla at an obscenely early hour to accommodate one of those pack-’em-in post-gig club nights. Alas, Kennedy’s voice ain’t playing ball. After an unbroken run of gigs, he reckons he’s coming down with laryngitis, warns us that there’ll be no yelping falsetto tonight, and continually apologises for his croakiness. Actually, within his self-imposed limits he doesn’t sound too bad at all, despite visibly struggling on occasion.
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He opens with Devil on the Wall from Year of the Tiger, which is, refreshingly, not what one might expect from the solo debut by an arena rocker. It’s an emotionally charged, Americana-esque concept album inspired by his father, a committed Christian Scientist who died when Kennedy was five years old, having refused medical treatment for appendicitis. (As an aside, we should perhaps not knock Christian Scientists too much for their daft beliefs, because without them we would not have had Metallica’s The God That Failed, which addresses the death of James Hetfield’s mother in similar circumstances to that of Kennedy’s father.)
The shame is that Kennedy performs less than half of it tonight – just five songs by my reckoning – in favour of a crowd-pleasing romp through his 20 year career. The likes of World On Fire (Slash ft. Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators) and Addicted to Pain (Alter Bridge) sound like exactly what they are: strum-along versions of big arena anthems built for hearty audience bellowing, which has the advantage, in this instance, of relieving the singer of onerous vocal duties. But there are some pleasant surprises, such as when he’s joined by manager/second guitarist Tim Tournier for an exquisite version of the picking’n’slide-driven Haunted by Design from Year of the Tiger, helpfully written in a lower register, which sounds not unlike the early Doobie Brothers. (This, incidentally, is not a criticism: don’t knock the pre-Michael McDonald Doobies!)
Unlike certain rock frontmen who appear terrified when forced to go off-script, Kennedy enjoys an easy rapport with his audience and positively encourages interaction. Alas, this proves to be mostly of the banal “We love you Myles!” variety, prompting him to recall the most alarming heckle early in this lengthy tour when a South African chap repeatedly shouted: “I want to have your baby, Myles!” A tongue-in-cheek request for Freebird is rewarded with an impromptu rendition of the first verse of Sweet Home Alabama and he shares memories of his shameful early experiment with the mullet, which he pronounces ‘mull-ay’ in a doomed attempt to make it sound French and sophisticated.
He also self-deprecatingly berates his younger self for writing such terrible lyrics, interrupting the Mayfield Four’s Mars Hotel with a running commentary on its shortcomings (“What a whiner!“). Try as one might, it’s hard to imagine the self-important likes of Bono following suit. The rawness of Blind Faith (“All I ask of you is you understand/My anger once you’re gone”) from Year of the Tiger sits a little uncomfortably amid the generally upbeat mood, but Kennedy also takes a creditable stab at ’27 Club’ founder member Robert Johnson’s Travelling Riverside Blues, whose lemon-squeezing lyric was appropriated so blatantly by Robert Plant.
The encore brings Year of the Tiger standout Love Can Only Heal, received in reverential silence, followed by Leonard Cohen’s dirgy, over-familiar Hallelujah, which is probably the only song Kennedy’s voice can handle at this point. Still, he’ll be back, hopefully fully recovered, with a full band for the summer festival season, which includes a just-announced show at the nearly local, fan-run Steelhouse Festival.
All photos by Mike Evans
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