Alison Fensterstock, The Times-Picayune August 19, 2012
http://www.nola.com/music/index.ssf/...ine_big_s.html
The stage at One Eyed Jacks Saturday night, in anticipation of Lindsey Buckingham, looked surprisingly bare. There was no forbidding security team, no extra sound personnel, no barriers at the stage’s edge, not even a chair by the microphone – just a spotlight and a couple of bottles of water. A rack of half a dozen very nice guitars in the wings stage right was the only hint that the night’s featured entertainment was a bona fide rock legend, veteran of inaugural balls, multi-platinum albums and one of the most complicated and dramatic band soap operas in musical history.
Looking casual and weathered in jeans and a black leather jacket, Buckingham took the stage with little fanfare. He played two songs – his own “Cast Away Dreams” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Bleed to Love Her” - before introducing himself, and his new, pared-down performance concept, to the crowd.
“Thanks for coming to this intimate setting, to be part of this little experiment I’m doing here,” he said.
Lately, he said, he’s been thinking in terms of the “big machine” versus the “small machine.”
“The big machine is Fleetwood Mac,” he explained. “The small machine is the solo stuff.” As a solo artist, he said, he’d once taken out a ten-piece band on the road. Then, for a while, it was “the same three guys.”
“And now,” he said, “I seem to be up here on my own.”
“You’re not alone!” came a voice from the crowd. “We’ve always been here with you.”
Indeed, lots of people were there with him, ready to go whichever way Mr. Buckingham’s evolving muse dictated.
Ryan von Hesseling, who owns One Eyed Jacks along with Rio Hackford, estimated that the $60 ticket price for Buckingham’s concert is nearly twice as much as One Eyed Jacks’ previously highest-priced gig.
But even on a rainy August night, fans were lined up patiently down the block outside the venue. According to Hackford and von Hesseling, the performance sold out well in advance; extra tickets released for sale on Saturday night went speedily as well. Most in attendance appeared to be close to the artist’s own age; many audience members passed the wait time reminiscing about Fleetwood Mac shows past, and the name of the fabled New Orleans venue the Warehouse was overheard more than once.
I was one of several attendees who risked impoliteness by asking Mr. Hackford just how he landed such a big fish. Actually, he said, it was pretty easy – the club saw the available dates, bid and won. The independently owned, 400-odd-capacity spot was apparently just what Mr. Buckingham was looking for.
“He wasn’t interested in the House of Blues,” Hackford said. “He didn’t want to do the big venues.”
It was a good choice; small machine, small room. One Eyed Jacks chose not to put out additional seating (and Buckingham’s extra staff appeared to consist of one guitar tech) so the vibe in the room was as casual and intimate as for any local band. Fans packed the showroom standing shoulder to shoulder, close enough to the stage’s edge to easily touch the artist as he ran through a sixty-minute set drawn from his fairly extensive solo catalog.
Buckingham isn’t a technical guitar hero on the level of Mac founder Peter Green, which was a topic of debate overheard in several corners of One Eyed Jacks Saturday night. (In Rolling Stone magazine’s most recent tallying of the hundred greatest guitar players of all time, Buckingham placed #100; Green was #58.)
(Listen here to a pre-Buckingham Fleetwood Mac concert, recorded in 1970 at the Warehouse in New Orleans.)
If there is anything he might lack in technical wizardry, though (and really, placing on that list at all probably makes any discussion about lack of skill moot) he makes up for it a thousandfold in emotion. Averaging one guitar per song, Buckingham’s pounding, finger-picking style – reminiscent of his contemporary Richard Thompson - cascaded over the crowd in a shower of notes, interweaving with his passionate baritone bellow. He seemed as carried away, at points, as the audience was, closing his eyes for most of the performance. After finishing the cathartic breakup tune “Come,” he hollered “Yeah!” and nodded his head, as if he’d just been the one listening, not playing.
This bare-bones version of Mr. Buckingham’s solo tour has been going on for a while, and a look at his recent reviews confirms the “big machine/ small machine” comments are a regular part of his repartee. As he spoke, though, it seemed less like a practiced line of patter than a sort of mantra, repeated as much for himself as for the audience. (According to One Eyed Jacks staffers, Buckingham meditated alone in the dressing room before the show.)
Toward the end of the set, he revisited the big machine/small machine concept.
“It’s the smaller scale thing that allows us to keep moving forward,” he posited. “To keep being an artist, and to keep taking risks.”
Interestingly, though he did perform his signature Fleetwood Mac hit “Go Your Own Way,” it was not the note he chose to go out on. The set closer, “Seeds We Sow” – the title track of his most recent album – referenced his present, not his grand past.
A half hour later, as fans still milled about in the front bar of One Eyed Jacks, Mr. Buckingham – a slight figure, once offstage – slipped through the crowd and out the front door, nearly unnoticed. Where was he off to, I asked von Hesseling, imagining a five-star hotel, a tricked-out tour bus or a sumptuous late dinner.
“He’s getting in his small van,” Hesseling answered. “He has to be in Orange, Texas tomorrow.”