Chris Isaak - Beacon Theater 1995
Skeptics who think Chris Isaak's image as a rock 'n' roll Mr. Nice Guy is just some phony P.R. front might want to consider what the Stockton-born pop star was doingbefore andafter his show Sunday night at Sacramento Memorial Auditorium.
In the afternoon, Isaak and his band visited the Sacramento home of Carole Lowe-Enling, his first high-school girlfriend. She's battling cancer and they were there to serenade her. "We just wanted to cheer her up a bit," Isaak said later. "Just lift her spirits a little." After the show, the 42-year-old Stagg High School and University of the Pacific graduate spent 65 minutes in the auditorium's lobby, signing at least 500 autographs (many festooned with little drawings and personal remarks -- joking, kibbitzing, talking rock 'n' roll trivia and posing for photographs. Everyone in line got an autograph or a photo. "I do it every night," said Isaak, neatly setting up one of his patented one-liners. "It's court-ordered."
In between, he and his four-piece band Silvertone delivered one of their patented shows -- 22 songs and 100 minutes of twangy, melodic rock 'n' roll evoking the earlier times and places to which many in the mostly prim adult crowd of 3,200 could nostalgically relate. It was Isaak's biggest headlining show yet in Sacramento.
Mixing rollicking, rockabilly-derived romps with a smattering of his trademark blue ballads and a typically tasty selection of retro-rock oldies, Isaak -- dressed in his new purple sequined suit and twanging away on a white guitar with his name and Lowe-Enling's "I love, in the form of a heart, Carole" on it -- effortlessly unleashed his whisper-to-a-falsetto-wail vocals, engaged in the usual banter and Three Musketeers-style posing with the band, and, of course, regaled the crowd with his impish stand-up comedy schtick and a couple of semi-risque tall tales. This guy sure loves his work.
Five songs into the show, Isaak dedicated a tender, Latin-tinged version of "Return to Me," a Dean Martin chestnut from 1958, to "Carole." She was his "first sweetheart," said Isaak's mother, Dorothy. They met as 16-year-olds and graduated together from Stagg High and Isaak sends her a Hawaiian lei once a week to cheer her up. She's now a nurse and happily married mother of a 6-year-old son.
Mothers and daughters -- as well as sons and older husbands and boyfriends -- queued up to meet the man after the show. An absolute rarity in the jaded world of rock, Isaak's interaction with his fans is sincere -- he actually thanked the audience for showing up on a rainy night -- and a big part of the reason that his albums now reach gold and platinum sales figures in the absence of top-40 hit singles or heavy MTV rotation. Plus, he's the only one in '90s pop who's consistently mining the roots of American rock 'n' roll. He lovingly evokes the era of Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison without becoming mired in it. No amount of guitar twang and tremolo is too much for this band, even when it roughs things up a bit in a garage-rock style ("Go Walking Down There".
And it is a band. Isaak, with his pompadoured good looks, flashy fashion statements and affable, aw-shucks personality, gets all of the attention. Silvertone, a lean, mean, hard-rocking unit, does a lot of the dirty work, though. It never has sounded tighter or better. The rhythm section of drummer Kenney Dale Johnson and bassist Rowland Salley has been there from the start in the mid-'80s, when people had to stand on tables to see Isaak and Silvertone in tiny San Francisco clubs. Guitar player Hershel Yatovitz has broadened and deepened the twang 'n' tremolo sound pioneered by original guitarist Jimmy Wilsey. New keyboard player Brett Tuggle -- a classically trained veteran of the Los Angeles pop-rock scene -- has enriched the flashback sound with his contributions, especially on Hammond B3 organ.
Sunday's set list included at least one song from each of the seven albums Isaak has released since 1985, and one unrecorded tune (the raucous, B3-enriched "Put Out Your Hand". He concentrated on the newest album, 1998's "Speak of the Devil," with five of its tracks ("Wanderin'," "I'm Not Sleepy," the angry and anguished "Please," "Speak of the Devil" and the atypically un-sad "Flying") getting the show off to a fast start.
As always, a couple of his signature broken-hearted ballads got the girls (and women) squealing -- particularly "Wicked Game," his only top-10 single back in 1991, and "Forever Blue," the super-sad, why-did-you-have-to-dump-me? song from the platinum 1995 album of the same name.
A belly dancer helped the band sashay its way through "Dancin'," the sturdy first track from Isaak's very first album "Silvertone," 1985, thus demonstrating that he's writing memorable music destined to transcend time and trend. And, of course, there were the requisite oldies. A connoisseur of vintage ock records, Isaak soared through a Latin-tinged version of role model Roy Orbison's melodramatic "Only the Lonely" (1960) during one of two encores performed in his famous suit of mirrors. The band also cranked out a sizzling version of "Drinking Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee," a Sun Records gemlet from 1954 that featured Tuggle's boogie-woogie piano, "Sweet Leilani," a gentle Hawaiian favorite of Isaak's that was part of his acoustic "Baja Sessions" album in 1996, and "Diddley Daddy," the group's now-standard roadhouse romp through the Bo Diddley setpiece. Isaak honked away on harmonica. Though he's cultivated a recorded image as Mr. Sad, Isaak -- who's been nominated for a Bay Area Music Award (Bammie) as California's best male pop vocalist this year -- is always a load of laughs on stage (and on Leno and Letterman, for that matter).
Sunday, he told the truly tall tale of how he and Johnson discovered Yatovitz (who's actually from Palo Alto) playing in a strip joint in a "challenged" area of West Sacramento. He offered a sort of Jerry Springer-style counseling session on "connubial bliss" suggesting that, "If you're having an argument, be a man. Take the blame," and making references to squashed poodles and homicidal pyromania, among other things, discussed a New Year's resolution to stop wearing "taffeta" and tossed in frequent bits of semi-serious Sacramento/Stockton boosterism. He twice jumped into the non-moshing, semi-dancing crowd, eventually snaking his way through it -- pied-piper style -- on the closing "Bonnie," a trademark rockabilly romp. When he returned to the stage, five women from the audience were busy boogying away with the band. Isaak joined in. As usual, the show started with the proud pronouncement: "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, from Stockton, California, Chris Isaak and Silvertone." The announcer could have added: " ... Who have never played in Stockton, California."
But, hey, at least they're getting closer. From: https://www.recordnet.com/story/lifestyle/1999/03/02/stockton-s-chris-isaak-does/50810160007/
In the afternoon, Isaak and his band visited the Sacramento home of Carole Lowe-Enling, his first high-school girlfriend. She's battling cancer and they were there to serenade her. "We just wanted to cheer her up a bit," Isaak said later. "Just lift her spirits a little." After the show, the 42-year-old Stagg High School and University of the Pacific graduate spent 65 minutes in the auditorium's lobby, signing at least 500 autographs (many festooned with little drawings and personal remarks -- joking, kibbitzing, talking rock 'n' roll trivia and posing for photographs. Everyone in line got an autograph or a photo. "I do it every night," said Isaak, neatly setting up one of his patented one-liners. "It's court-ordered."
In between, he and his four-piece band Silvertone delivered one of their patented shows -- 22 songs and 100 minutes of twangy, melodic rock 'n' roll evoking the earlier times and places to which many in the mostly prim adult crowd of 3,200 could nostalgically relate. It was Isaak's biggest headlining show yet in Sacramento.
Mixing rollicking, rockabilly-derived romps with a smattering of his trademark blue ballads and a typically tasty selection of retro-rock oldies, Isaak -- dressed in his new purple sequined suit and twanging away on a white guitar with his name and Lowe-Enling's "I love, in the form of a heart, Carole" on it -- effortlessly unleashed his whisper-to-a-falsetto-wail vocals, engaged in the usual banter and Three Musketeers-style posing with the band, and, of course, regaled the crowd with his impish stand-up comedy schtick and a couple of semi-risque tall tales. This guy sure loves his work.
Five songs into the show, Isaak dedicated a tender, Latin-tinged version of "Return to Me," a Dean Martin chestnut from 1958, to "Carole." She was his "first sweetheart," said Isaak's mother, Dorothy. They met as 16-year-olds and graduated together from Stagg High and Isaak sends her a Hawaiian lei once a week to cheer her up. She's now a nurse and happily married mother of a 6-year-old son.
Mothers and daughters -- as well as sons and older husbands and boyfriends -- queued up to meet the man after the show. An absolute rarity in the jaded world of rock, Isaak's interaction with his fans is sincere -- he actually thanked the audience for showing up on a rainy night -- and a big part of the reason that his albums now reach gold and platinum sales figures in the absence of top-40 hit singles or heavy MTV rotation. Plus, he's the only one in '90s pop who's consistently mining the roots of American rock 'n' roll. He lovingly evokes the era of Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison without becoming mired in it. No amount of guitar twang and tremolo is too much for this band, even when it roughs things up a bit in a garage-rock style ("Go Walking Down There".
And it is a band. Isaak, with his pompadoured good looks, flashy fashion statements and affable, aw-shucks personality, gets all of the attention. Silvertone, a lean, mean, hard-rocking unit, does a lot of the dirty work, though. It never has sounded tighter or better. The rhythm section of drummer Kenney Dale Johnson and bassist Rowland Salley has been there from the start in the mid-'80s, when people had to stand on tables to see Isaak and Silvertone in tiny San Francisco clubs. Guitar player Hershel Yatovitz has broadened and deepened the twang 'n' tremolo sound pioneered by original guitarist Jimmy Wilsey. New keyboard player Brett Tuggle -- a classically trained veteran of the Los Angeles pop-rock scene -- has enriched the flashback sound with his contributions, especially on Hammond B3 organ.
Sunday's set list included at least one song from each of the seven albums Isaak has released since 1985, and one unrecorded tune (the raucous, B3-enriched "Put Out Your Hand". He concentrated on the newest album, 1998's "Speak of the Devil," with five of its tracks ("Wanderin'," "I'm Not Sleepy," the angry and anguished "Please," "Speak of the Devil" and the atypically un-sad "Flying") getting the show off to a fast start.
As always, a couple of his signature broken-hearted ballads got the girls (and women) squealing -- particularly "Wicked Game," his only top-10 single back in 1991, and "Forever Blue," the super-sad, why-did-you-have-to-dump-me? song from the platinum 1995 album of the same name.
A belly dancer helped the band sashay its way through "Dancin'," the sturdy first track from Isaak's very first album "Silvertone," 1985, thus demonstrating that he's writing memorable music destined to transcend time and trend. And, of course, there were the requisite oldies. A connoisseur of vintage ock records, Isaak soared through a Latin-tinged version of role model Roy Orbison's melodramatic "Only the Lonely" (1960) during one of two encores performed in his famous suit of mirrors. The band also cranked out a sizzling version of "Drinking Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee," a Sun Records gemlet from 1954 that featured Tuggle's boogie-woogie piano, "Sweet Leilani," a gentle Hawaiian favorite of Isaak's that was part of his acoustic "Baja Sessions" album in 1996, and "Diddley Daddy," the group's now-standard roadhouse romp through the Bo Diddley setpiece. Isaak honked away on harmonica. Though he's cultivated a recorded image as Mr. Sad, Isaak -- who's been nominated for a Bay Area Music Award (Bammie) as California's best male pop vocalist this year -- is always a load of laughs on stage (and on Leno and Letterman, for that matter).
Sunday, he told the truly tall tale of how he and Johnson discovered Yatovitz (who's actually from Palo Alto) playing in a strip joint in a "challenged" area of West Sacramento. He offered a sort of Jerry Springer-style counseling session on "connubial bliss" suggesting that, "If you're having an argument, be a man. Take the blame," and making references to squashed poodles and homicidal pyromania, among other things, discussed a New Year's resolution to stop wearing "taffeta" and tossed in frequent bits of semi-serious Sacramento/Stockton boosterism. He twice jumped into the non-moshing, semi-dancing crowd, eventually snaking his way through it -- pied-piper style -- on the closing "Bonnie," a trademark rockabilly romp. When he returned to the stage, five women from the audience were busy boogying away with the band. Isaak joined in. As usual, the show started with the proud pronouncement: "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, from Stockton, California, Chris Isaak and Silvertone." The announcer could have added: " ... Who have never played in Stockton, California."
But, hey, at least they're getting closer. From: https://www.recordnet.com/story/lifestyle/1999/03/02/stockton-s-chris-isaak-does/50810160007/
