Robert's Review of Kenny Neal at Artscenter, 2/28/98

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Kenny Neal brought a little bit of Fat Tuesday to the Artscenter Saturday night. His band churned out hot Cajun inflected blues with Kenny as a smiling guide.

Kenny Neal is from Baton Rouge and has been playing for years and his band includes his brothers on piano and bass. Their music is blues but not heavy and not sad - Kenny always has a smile. When he sings of love's loss he brings the audience into the singing as though he is saying "yeah been there, felt that, it was tough but its cool now" And the audience sang and danced along with him.

They played an eclectic set of blues including Little Walter's "My Babe" and a lot of originals including "Hoodo Man" and "Any Fool Will Do". After he played his "Howling at the Moon" the audience howled along. The songs often stretched on as switched from guitar to harmonica or lap steel. He ended the first set with an extended jam that includes a guitar solo rendition of "Jambalya" and ended with a jam of "When the Saints Come Marching Home". Many of the songs can be heard on his "Deluxe" collection but he also played some songs from a new CD including "I'm a Bluesman" where he called upon Willie Dixon for inspiration and segued into "I've got a Little Red Rooster". For his encore Kenny came out solo to sing "When things go wrong It hurts me too" with the audience then the band came out and joined in and turned it into a jam.

Kenny plays sparingly seldom trying to showboat on guitar - he just plays tasty blues. His harmonica playing is the same way he eschews fast fancy playing for straight ahead playing. He played the lap steel sparingly but nicely - maybe he didn't want sit that long and he would lose contact with the audience. He was very focused on the audience bringing them into the singing and steping off the stage for an extended harmonica jam. The band was solid with some very nice piano solos by one Neal brother and very popular bass by another one of his brothers. They easily overcame the loss of their regular drummer due to a late plane for most of the first set. The drummer who sat in was quieter than their regular drumer but it worked out fine.

The crowd was fairly mature and the Artscenter had a good crowd although not full. The crowd may have been held back by a Duke - Carolina game that afternoon which is too bad because a good dose of the blues was needed after that game. The dance floor was crowded and the audience was appreciative; by the end of the night the memory of the game had faded like the lost love sung of in the refrain of an old blues song. Although I must say the Duke fans had a good time too which may be unfair but that's the way the blues go.



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