Van Morrison was a crowd-pleaser — even without too many crowd pleasers — on Saturday night at the Wells Fargo Theatre. Photos by .
was armed well at his Denver concert on Saturday night.
Wearing his ever-present sunglasses, suit and fedora, Morrison switched between a white acoustic guitar and a harmonica, an electric guitar and an alto saxophone during his 90-minute, no-nonsense set at the on Saturday.
The time spent with Morrison was hardly as memorable as the artistap Red Rocks show a few summers back, but longtime fans were pleased as Morrison kicked off the evening (at 8 p.m. sharp, no less) with “Northern Muse (Solid Ground),” “This Love of Mine” and “Fair Play.”
The singer-songwriter catered his performance to the fans who have faithfully followed his music beyond “Brown Eyed Girl,” the fans who enjoy/revel in elongated takes – accented by multiple solos – of “Foreign Window” and “The Mystery.” I’ll admit that I’m not that fan, but still Morrison’s top-notch six-piece band made for an entertaining evening.
The gentleman on the flute/tenor sax/bari sax was a master player who was versatile enough to handle all three of those instruments with aplomb, and the seated acoustic guitarist was a madman who slayed each of his solos and accented Morrison’s playing smartly, ably.
Speaking of the solos, the best part of the show came watching Morrison dole out the solos – with a head-nod here and a finger-point there. You could tell some of it was impromptu, as Morrison would sometimes bark at an unprepared player – the flutist/sax player and the pianist/trumpeter – to pick up his other instrument and join him on an improvisation.
Morrison’s shows are always studies in dynamics, and the loud-soft-loud of his songs is one of his trademarks that, like his hat and glasses, has become a cliché. But Morrison’s cloud-lifted, otherworldly voice never gets old.
That said, Saturday’s setlist, which also included “Queen of the Slipstream,” “All In the Game” and a gorgeous “In the Garden,” wasn’t ideal. Itap not like anybody who paid between $90 and $350 to see Morrison expected to hear “Brown Eyed Girl,” but he could have thrown a couple more familiar bones.
He played fewer than 15 songs, and of those, only two or three were familiar hits – including “Moondance” and the Them track “Gloria.” And of those, Moondance cruised on a sweet backbeat while “Gloria” sounded like a dated anachronism – a shame indeed because itap one of the strongest songs he’s written to date.
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Ricardo Baca is the founder and co-editor of and an award-winning critic and journalist at The Denver Post. He is also the executive director of the , Colorado’s premier indie music festival. Follow his whimsies at , his live music habit at and his iTunes addictions at .
is a Denver photographer and a regular contributor to Reverb.
