Four score and two years ago, before he was brought forth onto this continent, John Mayall’s father conceived his son in liberty and dedicated him to the proposition that all blues are created equal.
It was fitting that it was John Mayall who celebrated the weekend of our nation’s birth at the Canyon Club, as he bodily represents the renaissance of America’s music that was brought over from England in the 1960s much like the Mayflower 400 years earlier. At 82 years old, he is still on the upward arc of a career that currently has him releasing some of his best material ever with his 6+ year band of Rocky Athas/g, Grag Rzab/b and Jay Davenport/dr. Even his recent historical cd release of his ’67 band with Peter Green and a pre-Peyton Place team of Mick Fleetwood/dr and John McVie/b shows that his career has been a steady delivery of America’s finest music through the eyes of our founding colonists.
The 1 ½ hour set delivered by Mayall and company was a textbook example of the many hues that indigo can be delivered. At the keyboard, Mayall sang in remarkably strong voice to a heavy backbeat on “Where Did You Go Last Night” to a funky New Orleans groove on “Congo Square.” His read of “Parchman Farm” had his patented harp playing searing over an infectious shuffle beat while he delivered a foreboding “Long Gone Blues” as Davenport supplied moody mallets and Athas stung with a penetrating Les Paul.
Mayall turned his keyboard into a B3 for a smoking boogie woogie on “The Son of Something” and then hit the vibraphone button for a low ceilinged and after hours “Stormy Monday.” Even funk got into the blues-mosphere, as “Nature is Everything” had Rzab pick a rollicking and thumping bass line before he let his fingers do the walking on a riveting solo on “Chicago Line.” As the band closed with the encore “Made Up” the octogenarian Mayall proved to the packed house that there is a fountain of youth in America, and it is imbibed from a cup of the blues.
Upcoming shows at The Canyon Club include Robert Cray 07/31, Mavis Staples 10/02, Johnny Lang 10/31 and The Yardbirds 11/15