Blues Monsters set list: All That Jazz, Olympia, Washington

August 23, 1997, notes by Jeffrey Showman

The 'Jazz is a restaurant that has music later in the evening, so we tend to turn the volume down, but we hardly needed to this night -- it was a rockin' crowd! By the third set, folks were dancing in the aisles. A typical Blues Monster night: some new and exciting musical ideas (except for a few songs like "24 Hour Fool", we virtually never play solos the same way twice) and a couple of on-the-spot head arrangements.

Set One:

San-Ho-Zay - Freddie King instrumental...Ian put this one at the top of the set as we were tuning up. He was feeling inspired after watching Buddy Whittington burn through Sen-Sa-Shun at a recent John Mayall / Blues Breakers show.

Top of the Hill - Don and Linda duet, a John Mayall tune we learned from Coco Montoya.

Coasting Home - A great 8-bar blues riff, real uptempo, that Ian found on a Mick Taylor Live CD.

Red House - Ian just smoked on this Hendrix tune: folks were applauding after the first 12 bars of his solo.

Bad For Me - The first of our many Debbie Davies tunes of the evening

24-Hour Fool - The next of our many Debbie Davies tunes.

She's Into Something - Robert Cray tune, we do very funky.

Reconsider Baby - Lowell Fulsom, solid blues. I always aim for that laid back jump-blues sax feel on my solo.

Burning Down the House - Our drummer Chris suggested we learn this Talking Heads song, as done by Bonnie Raitt, and I'm glad we did. I like playing horn funk parts on the harp, and this gets it.

Set Two

Slide Over - An Ian Weintraub original, nice slide guitar/harp instrumental.

New Minglewood Blues - This is another favorite of mine, because it's got that Bo Diddley beat going on, and I get to play maracas and get into a total rhythm thing on the harp.

Gotta Mind to Travel - Don on lead vocals, another Coco Montoya cut.

Watching over Him - Ian wrote the music and his wife Lori wrote the words. Another one of our new tunes (this was only the second public performance), we all like it a lot.

Love Her With a Feeling - Freddy King

I Wonder Why - We had a friend sit in with us on guitar on this, Lotta fun.

Guilty - Linda really gets down on this tune that Bonny Raitt made famous, Randy Newman wrote.

Mojo Boogie - A J.B. Lenoir tune. Don found this by Brenda Burns but if you look around you'll find plenty of versions of this tune....(Freddie King, Johnny Winter, Sonny Landreth....) We've pretty much done our own thing with it...

Lovin' Cup - We play this tight: head in unison, lots of breaks, gospel-style riff at the end. Linda leaves us plenty of room for solos.....more and more the ending gets stretched out and

Going Down - More Freddie King, and a great set closer.

Set Three:

Rock Me Baby/Southbound - Ian came up with something different, giving Don 36 bars of solo on bass.

Country Boy - Another Don and Linda duet, a fun novelty tune. Freddie King's first recorded single.

I'm Going Down the Road (Feeling Bad) - Our little tribute to the Grateful Dead.

Mustang Sally - We definitely funk this one up. On the turnaround, I get to play the same line as the Memphis Horns did on Wilson Pickett's original.

Let the Heartaches Begin - A nice slow Debbie Davies / Tab Benoit duet...Don and Linda sing the heck out of it, and we had some couples slow-dancing.

Messin' with the Kid - A classic. We were going to quit with this, but the crowd hollered for more , so we did . . .

Tore Down - Freddie King (wasn't he great!?). We really tore it up! Linda left us plenty of room for solos at the end, and I wish I'd recorded it because I had some sort of riff going on the middle-upper register that I'm not sure I'll ever find again. Ah well, like Cecil Taylor said, "Music, it's in the air and then it's gone."

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