While best known as an actor in many an acclaimed movie, Dennis Quaid showed that he’s also an adept travel agent, as he and his band The Sharks took the audience to the back roads of Louisiana Moose Lodges and VFW Posts with a collection of blues rocking originals and covers from his recent album Out of the Box.
Quaid was in good company with a rhythm team of Tom Walsh/dr, Tom Mancillas/b and Ken Stange/key that supplied the big easy beat to catchy rural grooves like the original “I’m In Love” while lead guitarist Jamie James gave something to talk about with some hot guitar solos on a rollicking take of “Not Fade Away.”
As for Quaid, his voice is a richly leathered baritone that gives hints of Jim Morrison, but without the danger and with comfort and assurance. Understanding the power of sin and salvation, he’s able to give an accurate vantage point of the comfort of grace and forgiveness on a gripping and autobiographical “On My Way to Heaven” while playing the guitar and singing with footloose vigor. He and the band showed how to make love songs that are yours, mine and ours on a fun “You’re So Fine.” He switched to keyboards and gave an undercover blues reading of a man who knows the strengths and weaknesses of the innerspace of his soul on a clever “Good Man, Bad Boy.”
The inspired set concluded with a pair of Doors tunes; a rendition of “Riders on the Storm” that had the Roger Miller alumnus Stange deliver some moody blues, and Quaid playing for keeps as he sang with fervent passion before kicking the band into overdrive and breaking away into a hard hitting “LA Woman” that had everyone’s mojo rising.
In an era of navel gazing groaners, it’s encouraging to see a musician and singer who remembers how to not only pen a tune worth singing, but spinning a song worth swinging. If Quaid ever decides to eschew the screen and tour with this team, I can only imagine what impact he could make along the blue highway juke joints.