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Bonnie & Taj at The Bank of America Pavilion in Boston

on August 19, 2009 No comments

by Robert Israel
EDGE Media Network Contributor

Taj Mahal, a commanding presence backed by the six piece Phantom Blues Band, burst onto the Bank of America Pavilion stage on a muggy August 15th and took the place by a storm. Taj is a versatile and positive spirit made flesh, endowed with a gravelly voice that plumbs the depths of the blues.

He began his set with an instrumental, “Honky Tonk,” and then he launched into a Bo Diddley number from the 1950s, “Diddy Wah Diddy.” He told the audience he knew it was written expressly about Boston. “It ain’t no town and it ain’t no city,” Taj crooned, “but they love me down in Diddy Wah Ditty.”

Yes, the audience in “Bean City,” as Taj calls Boston, truly does love this Massachusetts native, and they proved it during the three-hour concert presented by Live Nation. Taj hopped around the musical canon and was later joined co-headliner Bonnie Raitt (who also has Massachusetts roots) in several crowd-pleasing numbers that rocked the house.

The tour, titled “BonTaj Roulet,” a combination of their two names and a twist on “laissez les bon temps roulez” (“let the good times roll”) kicked off with two concerts in Massachusetts. It will tour nationally through to the end of next month, with the last concert set for Sept. 16 in Oakland, Calif., near where both the musicians are based.

It is a tour that has been years in the planning, Bonnie Raitt announced later, representing a friendship that was fostered at Club 47 in Cambridge when Bonnie was an undergraduate enrolled in African studies at Harvard. Taj Mahal, like Bonnie Raitt, had other ambitions then when he was enrolled at UMass-Amherst (she’s 58 and he’s 67), but music took hold of them both and the rest is history.

They can crank it up and tone it down, depending on their moods; they can move from guitar to piano with ease; they can play a ragtime number and then shift 180 degrees to a gospel-infused piece or slink on into a searing, smoky ballad. And all along, the message they communicate is to live fully and with gusto, to get through the hard times, to embrace the collective good will of good people, and to endure.

“I know these are hard times, but you got to feel good and we sure do know how to make you feel good,” Bonnie Raitt said from the stage.

Taj echoed this sentiment when he told the audience, “The blues is like group therapy.”

In song after song, “Fishing Blues,” “Sweet as a Honey Bee,” “Send Out Blues,” and “Real Good Thing,” Taj delivered, dancing, prancing onstage, picking up his banjo and plunking out a blues riff, or growling lowdown and nasty while swiveling his hips and rolling his eyes. There is no end to his exquisite enjoyment of music, and it rippled through the audience with electricty.

Bonnie Raitt did her own set, accompanied by several of the Phantom Blues Band and her longtime accompanist George Marinelli on guitar, who traded guitar licks. One particularly moving moment came during her rendition of John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery,” which she first recorded with Prine on a live album of his dating from the 1980s. She stood alone on stage with her acoustic guitar and sang a capella; when the band broke in, she delivered this ballad about dashed hopes with pathos.

“There’s flies in the kitchen,” she sang in the closing verse from “Angels,” “I can hear them a-buzzing. I ain’t done nothing since I woke up today. How in the world can a person go to work in the morning, come home in the evening, and have nothing to say?”

The blues is about loss, about psychic angst, about loneliness and the longing for love, and that’s the message of Prine’s song. And it is also the message in the Willie Dixon song, “Built for Comfort,” which promises sexual fulfillment only when lovers get it on in the slow groove, which the headliners performed with warmth and sass and attitude, sending the audience dancing to its feet.

The positive message these performers bring to roots/blues/jazz/rock songs is inspirational. Without preaching, the songs they sang spoke of transcendence over hard times, personal pain and loss, and they delivered it with an infectious love of life.


Source: © Copyright Edge Media Network


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BONNIE RAITT and TAJ MAHAL at Wolf Trap

on August 18, 2009 No comments
by Mike Joyce
Bonnie Raitt performs at the The Women’s Conference in Long Beach, CA – Oct. 22, 2008 © Chris Pizzello /AP

Bonnie Raitt is well known for handpicking and generously showcasing her tour mates. But she couldn’t have been more accommodating at Wolf Trap on Sunday night, when she shared the stage with bluesman Taj Mahal, her friend of 40-plus years and her “favorite artist ever.”

After an opening set in which Mahal’s Phantom Blues Band exuberantly kicked off “The BonTaj Roulet” revue, complete with brass, reeds and evocative set design, Raitt significantly overhauled her show. She engaged in cozy duets and launched a long series of encores that further capitalized on the horn-powered double bill, culminating in a festive mix of newly arranged hits and blues, boogie, soul, reggae and calypso treats.

Of course, being in good company is one thing, being in good voice another. Raitt was in terrific voice, and she knew it. She belted out “Something to Talk About” and other up-tempo tunes in husky, lusty tones, and charged two signature ballads — “Angel From Montgomery” and “I Can’t Make You Love Me” — with as much as power as poignancy. Even so, her singing didn’t overshadow her expert (and extensive) bottleneck guitar work, with its customary bite and resonance.

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Fronting a tight band that prominently featured a new recruit — veteran keyboardist and singer Ricky Peterson — Raitt joked at one point that her voice keeps getting lower, which is undoubtedly the case. But it’s as soulful as ever, perhaps even more so, and the chance to perform alongside Mahal, who had no trouble reinvigorating his hits (or mimicking Howlin’ Wolf’s deep roadhouse moan), was all the inspiration she needed.


Source: © Copyright The Washington Post

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B’KLYN BLUES LIGHTS FUSE

on August 17, 2009 No comments
By DAN AQUILANTE

“BonTaj Collective Action Fund”
Prospect Park Bandshell, Brooklyn, NY


ANYBODY who believes that ya gotta suffer to sing the blues didn’t see Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal join forces Wednesday at the Celebrate Brooklyn! benefit concert in Prospect Park.

They were like siblings from different mothers — both excellent in their individual blues sets and red hot together in the second half of the show.

Just about every song the two played together had a moment that left fans slackjawed, but if you had to pick a single high point, it was when they fired up Taj’s 1972 hit “She Caught the Katy (and Left Me a Mule to Ride).” Red-haired Raitt’s bottleneck slide guitar work gave the duet a slithering quality, and Mahal lent the piece proper train rhythm with huffing blues harp and growled lyrics.

While each is an accomplished musician, what made the night special was their chemistry.

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Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal performing “Comin’ Home” together with their bands @ Celebrate Brooklyn, Prospect Park Bandshell, Brooklyn, NY 8-12-09

Friends make good music together and Mahal, 67, has been pals with Raitt, 59, since the mid-’60s. They’ve never performed together, but you wouldn’t know it from their playful rapport. Mahal got an onstage back-scratch from Raitt, and later he danced to her guitar work with hips unhinged.

Individually, Raitt was a little better than Mahal, although he did knock down killer version of “Fishin’ Blues” that had the fans on their feet.

Raitt towered twice in her solo set, first during “Angel From Montgomery.” She’s sung this John Prine song for 30 years and has made it her signature: When she sang the opening line, “I am an old woman, named after my mother, my old man is another child grown old,” a cappella, it gave you the shivers. That happened again when she unwrapped her heartbreak ballad “I Can’t Make You Love Me.”

The performances by Raitt and Mahal perfectly illustrated what she told the Brooklyn crowd: “The blues never goes out of style.”

dan.aquilante@nypost.com


Source: © Copyright New York Post

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