Austin, Texas Erwin Center March 1, 2015

[michelej1]

By Peter Blackstock- American-Statesman Staff

Saturday, Feb. 28, 2015

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/ente...3944680.735658

“And the songbirds keep singing, like they know the score.” As the final chorus of “Songbird” floated into the Erwin Center’s rafters, Fleetwood Mac reached the moment of its swan song, for what might have been forever. It was Halloween night of 1982, and 16,000 Austin concertgoers had just witnessed what turned out to be the last show that Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Christine McVie, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood played together for a long, long time.

Nobody realized that would be the case when it happened, least of all the band members. They’d agreed to take a break and pursue solo projects after a four-album run from the mid-’70s to the early-’80s that included “Rumours,” one of the biggest-selling LPs of all time. But when it came time for the next Fleetwood Mac tour, not everyone was on board.

Buckingham was the first to depart, agreeing to record the 1987 album “Tango in the Night” with the group but not to tour behind it. Replacements were hired for the tour that stopped at the Erwin Center in fall 1987, but Nicks, whose solo career had flourished in the mid-’80s, left after 1990’s “Behind the Mask.”

All five members reunited to play one song at the January 1993 presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton, who’d adopted the band’s song “Don’t Stop” as the theme of his campaign. But it wasn’t until May 1997, nearly 15 years after that night at the Erwin Center, that all five members played a full show again, recording the live album “The Dance” in Los Angeles.

That album sparked a tour that stopped in Dallas, San Antonio and Houston in late 1997 but not Austin. Subsequent Fleetwood Mac tours were missing Christine McVie, writer of the pivotal “Don’t Stop” among other hits, until she rejoined last fall.


Speaking by phone from California this week, Buckingham said he thinks McVie’s 16-year absence from the band, which involved a move from Los Angeles back to her native England, “had a good healing effect for her, and she sort of came out the other side. She started to appreciate what this particular family, dysfunctional as it may be, had to offer for her, and how much she shared with us.

“Because really, for better or for worse, we as a fivesome have been through things together that no one else has been through. On some strange level, we all know each other in a way we’ll never know someone else who hasn’t been through all that. And I think she really just started to miss it.

“If you want to think of there being a number of acts that can last over a number of years, this could be the beginning of a beautiful last act.”

That ‘final’ show

The band’s sold-out concert Sunday at the Erwin Center marks the classic lineup’s first show at the venue in more than 32 years. The 1982 Erwin Center appearance was ticketed for Oct. 7, but a band illness on that date forced a postponement. The Oct. 31 show, rescheduled for the very end of the tour, thus became a date with destiny for Austin fans.

The 22-song performance opened hot with the “Rumours” rockers “Second Hand News” and “The Chain,” Buckingham bouncing about the stage in a constant kinetic frenzy. “Rumours” tracks provided the bulk of the set, though they also drew from their 1982 album “Mirage” (which was No. 2 on the Billboard charts at the time), as well as from their 1975 self-titled LP and 1979’s adventurous double-album “Tusk.”

A mid-set highlight was the classic ballad “Landslide,” with former lovers Nicks and Buckingham exchanging heartfelt glances and gestures at the song’s end. (“Landslide” later helped Fleetwood Mac connect with new generations of fans when Smashing Pumpkins had a modern rock radio hit with an acoustic cover version in 1994, followed by the Dixie Chicks’ country crossover smash in 2002.)

The whole night felt special, as if the band members knew it was the end of an era. A look back at writer Kevin Phinney’s review of the show in the American-Statesman confirms as much. “After a 5-minute solid din of applause,” he noted in addressing the encore, “the group re-emerged, and Buckingham said that not only was this the last tour date, but it would be the last time Fleetwood Mac would perform together for some time, since they all have some solo projects ahead.”

Asked about the show in our phone interview, Buckingham said he didn’t recall specifics from that night, but in general he was feeling uncertain about the band’s future, in part because he felt like the “Mirage” album had been a too-safe reaction to the envelope-pushing “Tusk.”

“I wasn’t sure where I was going in terms of my function with the band by the time we got done with that tour, because ‘Mirage,’ which had some beautiful songs on it, felt like we were kind of receding back for the wrong reasons,” Buckingham explained. “And it left me as a producer feeling like I was treading water.”

After the 1982 tour, Buckingham released his second solo album, “Go Insane,” and finally left the band in 1987 after working with them on “Tango in the Night.” “I felt that I would have been remiss if I had not been involved in that album, at the time that it came about,” Buckingham told me in a 1993 interview during a tour to support his 1992 “Out of the Cradle” album. “I didn’t feel any need to tour; I felt I had fulfilled my obligations, and that that was the time” to leave.

He had no plans to look back. Our 1993 interview took place just three weeks after the band’s one-song reconvening for Clinton’s inauguration, and “we got a lot of questions about (whether) this is going to mean we’re embarking on a real reunion. And it isn’t that at all. I wouldn’t have missed that time for anything, but I spent those 12 years preparing for being able to do something that I find a little more satisfying personally. There’s really no reason for me to want to go back to that now.”

Together again

Time changes everything, and by 1997, all five members were on the same page again. “The Dance” was one of pop music’s big events that year, a live DVD and CD culled from two performances on a Warner Bros. sound stage in which they were joined by the USC Trojans marching band for the anthemic title song of “Tusk.”

“The Dance” was mostly a recap of the band’s best-known songs with a few new tracks sprinkled in, but for some younger listeners, is was a revelatory point of entry. Austin singer-songwriter Jaimee Harris says she started playing music largely because of the impact the album had on her when she was 7 years old.

“My parents had gotten me a guitar when I was 5, and I messed around with it for a little bit,” she says. “And then ‘The Dance’ came out in ’97, and that totally did it for me — the harmonies, and I thought what Lindsey Buckingham was doing was amazing. So then I sought out to learn like every Fleetwood Mac song that I could.”

Harris is among more than a dozen local artists who will perform Fleetwood Mac songs at a March 13 tribute show at Strange Brew in South Austin. Others performing include Suzanna Choffel, Betty Soo, Matt the Electrician, Charlie Faye and Jon Dee Graham, whose son William Harries Graham is organizing the show.

“This show came about spontaneously when I gave Jaimee Harris some rare Stevie Nicks tracks,” Harries Graham said by email. “Jaimee talked about when she first saw Stevie Nicks stare down Lindsey Buckingham during the outro of ‘Silver Springs,’ singing ‘You’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you’ — that she had never witnessed such power in music before. We talked about much how fun it would be do to a Fleetwood Mac tribute.”

Revived interest in the band among musicians they influenced has been widespread for some time. In 2002, indie-rock pioneers Camper Van Beethoven re-recorded the “Tusk” album in its entirety, and a 2012 tribute disc featured contributions from the likes of Tame Impala, the New Pornographers, St. Vincent and Best Coast.

I asked Buckingham if he was familiar with the influence of Fleetwood Mac’s work on contemporary acts. “Yeah, I do hear those references in a lot of groups that are now what you would call indie groups, or alternative music. It’s kind of all over the place,” he replied. “But it’s a nice thing to be able to feel that – because really, that’s what it’s for. You put stuff out there to give something to somebody else’s life, really. And hopefully it takes.”

Locally, jam-rockers Calliope Musicals have been known to play “Rumours” in its entirety onstage, while country-rock band the Whiskey Sisters made the 1975 album cut “Blue Letter” a staple of their live sets in the past couple of years. “I have always been a fan of the songs, the harmonies and the unusual placement of vocals, not to mention the tasteful instrumentation,” says Whiskey Sisters co-leader Barbara Nesbitt.

Harries Graham says he first found his way to Fleetwood Mac after hearing Nicks’ backing vocals on folk-rocker John Stewart’s 1979 hit “Gold,” a paean to the golden age of Los Angeles folk-rock and pop music. “I think the band’s appeal is that whole innocence of the Southern California 1970s vibe of Neil Young, the Eagles, Gram Parsons and the great hope that seemed to feed American culture at that time,” he says.

Or perhaps it’s as simple as this: “Fleetwood Mac are among the titans of rock ’n’ roll,” Harries Graham declares, “but they are not so loud that my grandfather needs earplugs to listen to them.”

























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Fleetwood Mac

When: 8 p.m. Sunday.

Where: Erwin Center, 1701 Red River St.

Tickets: Technically sold out

Information: uterwincenter.com

For more of our interview with Lindsey Buckingham, check the Austin Music Source blog on austin360.com.

[elle]

looking for Landslide dedication from yesterday's show. did anybody here hear it?

[michelej1]

Here are some pictures

http://www.austin360.com/gallery/ent...-030115/gCRKq/

Click for video from Austin Statesman

http://austin.blog.statesman.com/201...reescale-sale/

We’re still groggy from “thinkin’ about tomorrow” at the Fleetwood Mac concert at the Erwin Center last night. Sorry, our DVRs are 13 months pregnant with episodes of “Downton Abbey” and “Walking Dead,” so we’ll have to catch up tonight. Here’s video from the show and the pics to prove it.

[michelej1]

Peter Blackstock, March 2, 2015 Austin Statesman

http://music.blog.austin360.com/2015...-erwin-center/


Fleetwood Mac brings it all back at the Erwin Center

“You tend not to honor or respect or trust nostalgia,” Fleetwood Mac’s fellow 1970s Southern California traveler Jackson Browne said last week on the radio program “World Cafe.” “To indulge yourself in just enjoying the music you really loved 30 or 40 years ago only, to limit yourself to that, is to sort of suffer a kind of death. But this guy I met in Italy said, ‘You’ve got this wrong: The most beneficial thing you can do is to go listen to the music that you were listening to when you were first deciding what kind of life you would have, when you were first passing barriers. It’s like a bond, to be connected to that part of your life in which all things were possible and you were really moving out into your life.’”

A sold-out crowd on Sunday night at the Erwin Center clearly shared that sentiment. Though the audience members ranged from teens to retirees, the majority were fans who first bonded with Fleetwood Mac’s music through “Rumours,” the 1977 classic that eventually sold 40 million copies and remains the band’s touchstone. Indeed, 10 of the 24 songs in Sunday’s set came from the “Rumours” album.

That included all of the first four songs: The bone-rattling, bass-driven “The Chain,” which allowed the anchoring rhythm section of bassist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood to shine; the radio hit “You Make Loving Fun,” which put the spotlight on keyboardist-singer Christine McVie recent return to the band after a 16-year absence; “Dreams,” the Stevie Nicks signature vocal that topped the charts in June 1977; and “Second Hand News,” the irrepressible “Rumours” opening track that epitomizes the livewire kinetic energy guitarist-singer Lindsey Buckingham brings to the band.

There’s perhaps less nostalgia in “Tusk,” the 1979 follow-up that wasn’t as hit-filled but took more chances, as a three-song passage shortly after the “Rumours”-dominated opening demonstrated. Stage lighting and back-screen images changed dramatically as Buckingham led the launch into “I Know I’m Not Wrong,” followed by the anthemic “Tusk” title track and the dark, mystical “Sisters of the Moon.” It was a brilliant turn toward one of the most fascinating passages of the band’s career.

Buckingham dipped into 1987’s “Tango in the Night” to open a mid-set acoustic section, giving “Big Love” a fresh and illuminating solo treatment on a classical guitar. Nicks then joined him for a transcendent duo rendition of “Landslide,” the song that directly validated Browne’s reflection on how music reconnects you to a pivotal time and place in the greater arc of life.

Indeed, if you first heard the song as a youth in the 1970s, there was no escaping the full-circle emotions that hung in the air as Nicks reached the line, “Even children get older/ And I’m getting older too.” And when she asked, “Can I sail through the changing ocean tides? / Can I handle the seasons of my life?” — those four seasons transposed into four decades, and the understanding that we all managed to handle them in our own way.

“Landslide” was hard to top, but Buckingham did so with “Never Going Back Again,” the show’s surprise highlight and the last number of the acoustic portion. As one of the deeper album cuts on “Rumours,” it carries a little less nostalgic resonance, in part because it’s all about not looking back: “Been down one time/ Been down two times/ Never going back again.”

The last stretch of the main set found the band losing a little bit of steam. Though the McVie-penned cuts “Over My Head” and “Little Lies” were welcome reminders of her return to form, Nicks’ drama-dripping “Gold Dust Woman” and Buckingham’s solo-heavy “I’m So Afraid” felt like indulgences.

The defining rocker “Go Your Own Way” refocused the band as the main set ended, leading into a thoroughly delightful four-song encore that began with “World Turning,” in which Fleetwood took a deserved but thankfully not indulgent drum solo (with Buckingham seated at stage left taking it all in).

Everyone sang along on “Don’t Stop,” the song that became a presidential campaign theme in 1992 and helped plant the seeds for the initial 1997 reunion of the band. “Silver Springs,” the exquisite “lost” track from “Rumours,” followed before stagehands wheeled out a baby grand piano so that McVie could close the show just as she had done at the Erwin Center in 1982, the last time she’d appeared with the band here.

“And the songbirds keep singing, like they know the score,” she sang out on the final chorus of “Songbird,” which floated into the Erwin Center’s rafters as Fleetwood Mac reached another swan song. Nicks and Fleetwood each took a moment to thank the crowd at the very end, but with more tour dates coming up and a new record in the works, something Buckingham had said earlier carried the greatest promise: “At this particular moment, with the return of the beautiful Christine, we begin a poetic, profound and prolific new chapter in the story of this band.”

[jbrownsjr]

Austin really digs the Mac! Thank you for posting.

[michelej1]

Fleetwood Mac Bewitches the Frank Erwin Center

A triumphant return for the Fab Five

By Raoul Hernandez, 12:47PM, Mon. Mar. 2 The Austin Chronicle

http://www.austinchronicle.com/daily...-erwin-center/

If ever an arena rock band made a convincing case for its own unplugged club tour, it was Fleetwood Mac Sunday night at the Frank Erwin Center. At the hour mark of an epic, 160-minute, 23-song show, a stripped down mini set cushioned the stillness and enduring beauty of songs known to all. Rockers age – musicians, compositions – but intimacy never grows old.

At the collective age of 338, Fleetwood Mac – Mick Fleetwood, 67, John McVie, 69, Christine McVie, 71, Stevie Nicks, 66, and Lindsey Buckingham, 65 – creak where they used to coke, but the longer they cajoled the sold-out Red River Drum, now choked by the surrounding construction of UT’s Dell Medical School, the more convincing they became. By the end of the marathon performance, you could almost believe the group’s late-Seventies heyday had returned – no worse for the wear and tear.

Opening with four straight tunes from their magnum opus, 1977’s Rumours, of which only two songs were omitted live, F-Mac’s shadow band couldn’t quite even out the headliners. Two auxiliary guitarists, three backup singers, and an unintroduced second drummer sitting behind Fleetwood’s gong augmented the all-star quintet, Nicks in elevated shoes and high heels to rival Seventies Kiss, which may or may not have explained stage moves best described as arthritic. When the band flubbed the opening to second song “You Making Loving Fun,” its author and singer, Christine McVie, shrugged helplessly across the stage to first guitarist Lindsey Buckingham.

On the succeeding “Second Hand News,” Buckingham proved he’s still F-Mac’s spark, its bark and bite. Nicks’ voice, husky now where once it spooked smoky, shook off some rust on “Rhiannon.” Her sister of the moon in the band, McVie – returned after a nearly two-decade hiatus – proved best in voice, her vocal showcases “Everywhere,” “Little Lies,” and solo show closer on piano, “Songbird,” recalling her maiden name: Perfect.

“A prophetic and profound new chapter in the band,” announced Buckingham in welcoming back the former Christine Anne Perfect, a sentiment later echoed by Nicks and Fleetwood.

“Tusk,” featuring many horns and backing tracks not played live onstage – and accompanied by the best use of video graphics that throughout the show could only be termed screen savers – and album mate “Sisters of the Moon” bottled still-underrated Rumours follow-up Tusk. “Go Your Own Way” to close the main set never took flight, and the drum solo in “World Turning” came too late in the show. “Don’t Stop” transcended even the band given its political overtones of the last peaceful presidency this country has enjoyed in 35 years.

At the heart of the evening beat five crystalline selections that surpassed the pomp of a classic rock concert. Buckingham’s solo acoustic delivery of “Big Love,” which then segued into a duet with Nicks on “Landslide,” and back out into his mostly unaccompanied “Never Going Back Again” brought a hush to even the FEC rafters. McVie’s stilling “Over My Head,” for which Fleetwood took to a stripped drum kit center stage, unearthed Rumours precursor Fleetwood Mac.

Even then, Nicks’ Mirage marker “Gypsy” eclipsed the whole portion with a heartfelt reminisce of her roots in San Francisco’s mid-Sixties music scene – opening to Hendrix, Joplin, Santana, CCR – and a truly bewitching vocal.

Remaining was an elongated, psych-tinged delve into her “Gold Dust Woman,” Buckingham’s trademark guitar showcase “I’m So Afraid” (also from Fleetwood Mac), and his searing solos on both. If Tusk remains under-appreciated, the guitarist’s preternatural ability on six strings is still criminally unheralded. No matter, really.

The Mac is back.

[michelej1]

Rev. Peter E. Bauer 03/03/2015 8:44 am EST Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-pe...b_6787524.html

A Rat At Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac's "On With The Show" tour came to the Frank Erwin Center in Austin, TX Sunday night, 1 March 2015. It was evident that not only humans wanted to see and hear the reconfigured Fleetwood Mac, but also animals.

As I was sitting in my seat in section 63 waiting for the show to begin, much to my surprise, five seats over, a well-fed big rat scurried down the terraced steps under the seats. A few people, I noticed, lifted up their legs.

Earlier, I had dinner at the Breckenridge Hospital cafeteria. It was a cold drizzly winter's night and two homeless men were my company. One young Caucasian man with a myriad of plastic bags slumped over his table sleeping with ear plugs in his ear connected to a possible iPhone. The other man was a bearded African-American man slouched sitting in is his chair with his head tilted back sleeping. The security guard came by and checked on them both. We all left minutes later as the cafeteria closed.

Walking across the street to the Frank Erwin Center was a challenge. All of the construction has swallowed up what used to be the old parking area. A Breckenridge Hospital employee told me "they are building a new hospital across the street." This should be interesting when the project is completed as there won't be much space between the new hospital and the Frank Erwin Center.

I thought how appropriate for Lent, construction, building, creating something new. But within the midst of the construction rubble, was the rat displaced to the Frank Erwin Center?

Fleetwood Mac delivered a generous three hour show with ample offerings from the Rumors and Tusk and Tango in the Night Albums. Much attention was given to the return of Christine McVie, who looked radiant and who also played ferociously proficient. Lindsey Buckingham bounced around the stage like a manic rabbit, flaying at his guitar, especially on "I'm So Afraid." Mick Fleetwood sat behind his drums like a Polynesian God and during "World Turning" uttered all of these guttural cries as if he was summoning the forces of the primal depths. John McVie held down the bass bottom all night and drove a solid consistent rhythm.

Stevie Nicks dedicated the song "Landslide" to her friend Allie and to her step-brother Corey and she mentioned that it was the favorite song of her deceased father. "When I sing it, I imagine him back with us." Nicks remind us poignantly:

But time makes you bolder

Even children get older

And I'm getting older too

And I'm getting older too

She also later gave a brief discourse about the song "Gypsy" which was inspired by the Velvet Underground in San Francisco in the 1960's, a vintage clothier that was frequented by Janis Joplin, Grace Slick and others. It was moving when Stevie Nicks observed "you need to find your own Velvet Undergound with its floor to a room with some lace and vapor flowers as your place of inspiration." She also encouraged people no matter their age to be able to find their passion in life.

The return of Fleetwood Mac with Christine McVie is truly a welcome event. This group of musicians who have been entwined not only musically but romantically as well still generate a lot of romance and yet also some danger. Their new period of musical development should be interesting.

Meanwhile, I'm wondering if the rat will show up for The Who ?

[michelej1]

Fleetwood Mac proves age is nothing but a number during Austin performance


By David Hall 3.3.15 | 10:38 am Austin Culture Map

http://austin.culturemap.com/news/en...-erwin-center/

The big news about the current Fleetwood Mac jaunt — dubbed the On With the Show tour — was the return of Christine McVie after her departure in 1998. The recent reconciliation certainly added an element of awe to their Sunday night performance at the Frank Erwin Center, the beloved band's first appearance on that stage since 1982.

Yet, while the songstress shone during her spotlights — particularly on a rousing romp through “Little Lies” and again with the show-ending, stripped-down piano ballad “Songbird” — there were poignant performances by each musician. During the course of the almost 3-hour show, the real headline became clear: 40 years on, the members of this quintet, filled out by bassist John McVie, drummer Mick Fleetwood, vocalist Stevie Nicks and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, are as essential to each other as they are to the foundations of rock and roll.

One only had to soak in the unassailable chemistry of the tracks pulled from this group’s first and second full-lengths together, 1975’s self-titled Fleetwood Mac and 1977’s Rumours, to attest to that fact. Opening track “The Chain” imbued the audience with an instant jolt, while Buckingham’s virtuoso solo run of “Never Going Back Again” inspired equal parts reverent silence and wild cheers throughout its perfectly-picked valleys and peaks, “Over My Head” was still striking in its perfect pop splendor, and Nicks’ bewitching throes during “Gold Dust Woman” supplanted any notions of age with arresting allure.

Similar transformations occurred throughout the show, first as Buckingham sashayed and shredded across the stage during “Tusk” with the brashness of a teenage boy, and again during Fleetwood’s extended drum solo on “World Turning" where he was reminiscent of a young punk riling his crowd for one final rally.

Those vignettes of eternal youth, signs of a sublime symbiosis between the musicians and their songs, were what made the band's return to Central Texas so special. Most of the tunes are timeless, and in those moments of pure aural abandon, it felt like Fleetwood Mac’s players could live forever, too.