If the goal of a musician is to tell a story, Mark Knopfler could very well be one of our modern day Bards. His concert at the Dolby was a 2 hour collection of 15+ musical novellas, taking you to various sonic journeys and parts of the world. He and his band of Mike McGoldrick, Joh McCusker, Guy Fletcher, Jim Cox, Glenn Worf, Ian Thomas, Nigel Hitchcock and the indefatigable Richard Bennett took the packed theatre on a minstrel show, journeying to lands far and wide.
Jesting to the crowd that he was going to “excavate historical artifacts,” Knopfler was able to make you feel like you were comfy in a Galway pub on material like “Father and Son” as the penny whistles and mandolins chimed away. You almost needed a World Music Catalogue to keep up with all of the instrument changes as violins, ukuleles and bagpipes made you shiver your timbers on “Privateering” and the cheerful harmonies inspired a jig on “Skydiver.”
Knopfler’s pack a day voice was in perfect troubadour form as the band swung an easy blues on “Laughs and Jokes and Drinks and Smokes” and as Knopfler strummed hi s dobro along with Hitchcock’s bel canto tenor on “Romeo and Juliet,” you couldn’t help want to toast along with a Guinness. The band stripped down to a quartet as Bennett, Worf and Thomas turned into a garage band on the rocking “Sultans of Swing.” All through the evening, Knopfler changed guitars as often as Liberace did with suits, but his solos were never flashy or boisterous; he used his moments in the six string spotlight to simply continue the mood or story.
Bennett’s strumming on the charanga along with the pan pipe like sounds from McColdrick and McCusker took you to the Andes on “Postcards from Paraguay” just before the band two stepped to the Cumberland Gap and Knopfler delved into a campfire story on “Marbletown.” He acted the role of a verissimo opera character on “Telegraph Road,” just before ending the evening on laid back and bluesy calypso “So Far Away” which took you to the tropics, and “Shangri La” was a last dance at the local VFW.
Whether taking the role of a minstrel or a lonely poet, Knopfler was able to take you from Ireland to the open seas and rural America with the simple turning of a page. On this Indian summer evening, Knopfler and his troubadours weaved stories from far away lands for the guests at the Dolby campfire.
