At the on Friday night, warned early on, “I’m from sea level,” as if to recuse himself from any mistakes or confused moments to follow. There were none.
Having worked through various physical challenges in his past, including partial hearing loss in both ears and tendon damage in his right hand, Kottke’s masterful technique, tempo and unwavering tone were not lost on revelers in the sold out venue. A room comprised, to be sure, of a large number of guitar players and general enthusiasts of the six and 12-stringed instrument, alike.
Photos, below, from a August 2010 show at Denver Botanic Gardens.
Kottke clearly enjoys playing the guitar, but he also enjoys telling stories while tuning his guitars into open and not-so-traditional settings. While introducing “Gewerbegebiet” to close the set, Kottke mused, “Germans did for the consonant what Hawaiins did for the vowel,” a line he employs often in concert. But some stories, or rather off-road soliloquies, seemed entirely unprovoked, as in gracing the audience with information about a worm-like parasite that grows beneath the skin, which seemed to sail well over the collective room’s head. But picking through a lineup of classics like “Julie’s House” and “Pamela Brown” or the precisely rhythmic, “From Pizza Towers to Defeat,” the man states and wins his case for your attention.
Perfoming traditionally on his own, Kottke perpetuated a laid back, even silly mood throughout. When an enthused audience member stole a quiet moment to shout out the obligatory, “You’re my guitar hero” compliment, Kottke poked fun at himself, “I can’t hear anything up here, I really can’t, though sometimes I’m glad I can’t.” He joked about his time early on as a trombonist, fearing a frugal career and a world of such instruments he teased, “The piccolo is the most limiting, you’ve got 4th of July, and that’s it.”
But again he played guitar, singing Bob Dylan’s “Corrina, Corrina” in a scratchy baritone, over a bright, well-versed sliding melody. For much of the audience the night was about the immediate greatness of what Leo Kottke can do with the instrument, the rest of us were reminded of what we cannot.
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Brendan Magee is a Denver-based writer and new contributor to Reverb. When not writing, Brendan is working on his own music as a singer-songwriter in Capitol Hill.
