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Tony Furtado :: 09.25.04 :: Skipper's Smokehouse :: Tampa, FL
As hurricane Jeanne struck the state of Florida, we road-tripped to Skipper's Smokehouse in Tampa (aka the "Skipperdome") for a storm-a-coming party with Fruit and Tony Furtado on September 25, 2004.
On a beautifully windy night, with clouds racing across a mostly full moon, we joined about a hundred other brave souls (who were perhaps as stir crazy as we were as storm number three approached) for an energetic evening of music. In sharp contrast to our last Furtado experience at north Florida's Magnoliafest a couple years ago, when temperatures dipped to feels-like-freezing for this native Floridian, the weather at the outdoor "Dome" was beautiful. The oaks, pines, and bamboo surrounding the stage swayed to the gusts and seemingly to the music as well.
Fruit :: 09.25.04 |
Fruit, the hot, five-year-old import from Adelaide, Australia, opened the show. The trio (consisting of the three "front line" women sans band mates for this show)--Mel Watson on an intriguing arsenal of horns and Susie Keynes and Sam Lohs on guitars--energized the intimate crowd with their intense vocal arrangements. Their funky, bluesy, rocking sound, described by some as acoustic pop, was punctuated by incredible harmonizing and endless energy. Called "music to fire your imagination," the seamless integration between the performers was intriguing. Their set pulled from their numerous albums, and songs like "Wind Blows" and "Sunsets and Hurricanes" were especially apropos for our tropical evening adventure.
Having crossed paths on the road before but never played together, Furtado was welcomed in for "Mama," fruits final song. As the band sang, "Everyday you helped the clouds to go away, you shine the light that takes away my darkest nights," Furtado and Watson interplayed around each other on this gorgeous love song. Furtado repeated Watson's "mouth flugal" note for note on his guitar as the rhythm built to Watson's energetic high, until Furtado just stepped back and smiled. We truly didn't know Fruit "was gonna be this good," as the lyrics opine, and wished we had arrived earlier to catch more of their set.
Tony Furtado :: 09.25.04 |
About 9:35 p.m. Furtado opened with "Staggerlee" and wrapped into "Raleigh and Spencer" as the rain lightly sprinkled. "Don't worry about the title of this song," Furtado said as he launched into his newer tune "Standing in the Rain," singing, "I don't know when it ever felt so good to be here standing in the rain."
Furtado then performed the title song from the July release These Chains, picking up the music as the winds seemingly played copycat, before embracing his banjo for "Hazel Comes Home." "Bet on the White Horse" led into Furtado's solo acoustic "Swayback Jim," the song envisioning an old horse with a swayback who suddenly breaks into a gallop that was written while Furtado was getting delusional in Nebraska during a drive from New York to Portland. He sang, "He's never looking back, this world has been so cruel/He stands alone and dreams of might have been/He's broken free and never looking back," quieting the already non-dancing crowd, exemplifying Furtado's new success as a songwriter alongside his heroes Bruce Cockburn and Richard Thompson. "How good the wind feels," Furtado said as he showed off his banjo "furts" in the instrumental "St. John's Fire." He then licked the guitar again on the old Bob Dylan song "One Too Many Mornings" and ended this somewhat dark set with the old prison work song "Oh Berta Berta."
Tony Furtado :: 09.25.04 |
As the winds continued to change, the mood did likewise as set two kicked off with a banjo favorite "My Sweet Baby" and a medley including "Garfield's Hornpipe," to which a sole dancer twirled. The resident musicologist mouthed "thank you" to the stage when Furtado said he learned the next song, Michael Nesmith's "Some of Shelly's Blues," from an old Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album. Furtado had given us a reward: listening to Furtados' CD Love Gypsy on the way to the show, I realized I knew every word to this song, but neither musicologist nor I could "name that group."
Furtado asked if we felt the drops of rain, before saying that it felt like New Year's Eve, when you're just waiting for something to happen, to which a fan replied, "I can't wait until it's Hurricane Tony." Perhaps there was just too much energy in the atmosphere already, causing "Rueben's Train" (a song Furtado said was about a guy who named a train and then they made a sandwich after him) to slow into an instrumental called "Can You Hear The Rain" from the 1997 album Roll My Blues Away and "Falsehearted Lovers Blues," an old Appalachian folk song with a revamped arrangement for the electric guitar.
Tony Furtado :: 09.25.04 |
A fan's request for the best right-hand technique song Furtado could dig up produced "Cypress Grove." Furtado broke into some intensive right hand interludes at the front of the stage on his 75-year-old guitar, whose damp strings caused tuning to be a challenge. Furtado brought out the banjo again to "take us out of here" and back to the windy road homewards, while a small crowd danced at the front of the stage.
For the 40 or so diehard fans (who obviously feared not the winds of Jeanne) a very special surprise ended the evening a little after midnight. Furtado asked everyone to "hunker" at the front of the stage for an acoustic version of one of Woody Guthrie's depression era songs, "I Ain't Got No Home." After teaching us the chorus, we sang "I ain't got no home, I'm just a-wanderin' 'round/ I'm just a wandering worker, and I go from town to town/ The police make it hard boys, wherever I may go/ And I ain't got no home in this world anymore."
(Writer's note: Apologies to all Floridians and especially Angie for the use of the word "hunkered" in this article, we’re sure you wanted to hear it just one more time. And a special note to television weather forecasters: next time, new word.)
Words by: Randi Whitehead
Images by: George Weiss
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