The latest Dave Rawlings Machine runs hard with help from John Paul Jones, Willie Watson, Paul Kowert and Gillian Welch
Dave Rawlings has brought his machine to Knoxville before, but never like this.
While he always brings an all-star cast with him, never before has Rawlings brought the star power that he has collected in the current makeup of this beautiful music machine.
The show’s billing was as intriguing as any I can remember. It read as follows, “Featuring members of Gillian Welch, Punch Brothers, Led Zeppelin, and a former member of Old Crow Medicine Show, the Machine will provide a night of distinctive picking, high lonesome songs, and many other fine acoustic entertainments.”
That prognostication was pretty spot on.
Knoxville is in exclusive company in terms of this outstanding lineup, as are the other six Southeastern cities that lay claim to this one-week tour. That lineup consists of Willie Watson, formerly of Old Crow Medicine Show, Paul Kowert, bassist from The Punch Brothers, Gillian Welch and Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones on mandolin.
There’s something special about seeing the first show of a tour, and when you’re dealing with the kind of talent that is in this collective, it’s even more extraordinary. While the professionalism never wavered, the show had the intimacy of a living room jam session. For those lucky enough to score tickets, the obvious wow is John Paul Jones, and for good reason. He has his own style on the mandolin that you won’t search hard to find a little Zep in, even on the grassiest of tunes. But the other members of this Americana co-op more than carry their weight. While Rawlings was calling the shots, he made it very clear that the show wasn’t about any particular member.
Watson periodically took his turn on lead vocals, often adding a bit of flair to the show. At one point, Welch and Rawlings remained onstage as a duo for a moving performance of “Sweet Tooth.” Jones seemed just fine adding backup vocals and picking away, and each song featured at least one big grin from the pioneer.
And while Kowert stayed in the background for most of the evening, he took a verse on The Band’s, “The Weight,” the group’s final song before the lights came up,
The Machine covered a lot of ground on the way to the encore. Included within the band’s myriad of covers were “To Be Young,” which Rawlings co-wrote with Ryan Adams, CCR’s “Midnight Special” and Bob Dylan’s “Queen Jane Approximately.”
There were a couple of mashups in the set list as well. One of the dual-songs saw Bright Eyes’ “Method Acting” slowly creak its way into Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer.” Rawlings learned to play the former while on a short tour with Bright Eyes after Conor Oberst called him to fill in as a last second replacement in late 2007.
Earlier in the set “I Hear Them All” paved the way for “This Land is Your Land.”
There were many highlights and there wasn’t a single moment that stood out as boring or lackluster. Rawlings seemed to have even more fervor than normal. At times throughout the night, it was hard to tell if he was holding his guitar up or if it was the other way around. And as Rawlings told the crowd to bear with him for his best Robert Plant, the first chords of “Going to California” were met with wild cheers and laughter from the most engaged crowd Knoxville has seen in some time.
Everyone in the room wanted to hear at least one Led Zeppelin song, and as John Paul Jones laid into his signature licks, all was right with a show that couldn’t have been much better.
