Piano Man to Mandolin
Who would have expected to hear Ricky Skaggs sing Rick James's "Super Freak"? More to the point, Who would even want to watch a God-fearing, bluegrass-loving disciple of Bill Monroe do such a thing?
Skaggs's relatively minor debasement came at the end of jazz-rock pianist Bruce Hornsby and Skaggs's show at New York's Concert Hall last night. Padding their recently released collaboration with lots of amiable patter (except when Hornsby, in Dennis Miller mode, went over Skaggs's head entirely with his references to the likes of Elliot Carter), the pair delivered a nicely paced set of briskly picked tunes.
Hornsby turned out to be a fluid, spidery-fingered addition to Skaggs's Kentucky Thunder sextet, which assembled into a four-guitar acoustic army formation when Skaggs wasn't chopping rhythms on his mandolin or delivering short elegant solos. Hornsby songs like a "Mandolin Rain" (naturally), "The Way It Is," and "The End of the Innocence" (his hit collaboration with Don Henley) sparkled in their new arrangements. Skaggs stepped up to Hornsby with "Gulf of Mexico Fishing Boat Blues," an instrumental they touted as "the first bluegrass song in 5/4 time."
Skaggs also introduced Hornsby to the music of the late Kentucky traditionalist Roscoe Holcolm, whose "Across the Rocky Mountains" they performed as a long, meditative one-chord vamp. And they of course dipped into traditional bluegrass with Bill Monroe's "Uncle Pen," Doug Kershaw's "Sally Joe," and the folk ballad "Little Sadie." The latter song famously recounts how the singer is sentenced to death for the seemingly blithe murder of his lover or wife. Look to the old songs for the real super freaky.