Van Morrison and his touring band stopped in Austin last September for a much-anticipated performance at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. We decided not to go since we knew all too well that the price of the brutal late-summer sun and heat in Austin would be excessive, even for a chance to hear a longtime favorite musical artist.
Van was touring his c&w-themed 2006 CD Pay the Devil, so it was uncertain what his set list in Austin would feature or what idiosyncratic mood he would be in for the performance. An enhanced edition of Pay the Devil had included a video disc showcasing an energetic but enigmatic performance at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Would the Austin show focus on c&w or would it include the full flavor of his lengthy and innovative career?
Early reports here and there from the festival were pretty positive but not detailed. Then up popped a contemporaneous in-studio effort taped for the Austin City Limits show on PBS. It was enjoyable, but didn't quite capture Van Morrison at full burn.
Recently an email via his UK website arrived, offering a limited-edition, 2-disc CD of the ACL Music Festival performance. Well, the CD package arrived recently and it's a revelation. That show at Zilker Park in Austin would have been [well, almost] worth the price of dehydration and sunburn.
What impresses me about the CD? For starters, Van is by turns impassioned, intense, and playful - he sounds better than he has for years on any recording. The band is in fine form and has great arrangements; musical styles transition easily between c&w, blues, jazz and Van's trademark Celtic soul.
The overall set is full of small surprises as well as familiar grooves. The song selection spans forty years or more, from Pay the Devil tunes to old favorites like "Cleaning Windows," "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Gloria", with frequent lyrical and musical allusions to Van's roots in 50s and 60s rock and soul. To hear Van's take on Sam Cooke - how fun is that? To hear a fresh, jazzy arrangement of "Moondance" - terrific. An eight-minute rave-up of his young man's anthem "Gloria"? What a great ending to a great night in Austin.
This CD has been in constant rotation at home and in the car - a nifty piece of work by an authentic legend of popular music . At one point, Van comments to the crowd that he can't recall when he was last in Austin, but "it's been worth the wait." That's true for us as well.
Set list:
• Back on Top
• Big Blue Diamonds
• Playhouse
• Days Like This
• Muleskinner Blues
• In the Midnight
• Bright Side of the Road
• Don't You Make Me High
• Cleaning Windows
• I Can't Stop Loving You
• Real Real Gone/You Send Me
• Saint James Infirmary
• Moondance
• It's All in the Game/You Know What They're Writing About
• Precious Time
• Don't Start Crying Now/Custard Pie
• Wild Night
• Brown Eyed Girl
• Gloria