Wow.
I’m almost at a loss for words to describe how incredible it was hearing tonight’s headlining performance of “Abbey Road” by the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera’s partnership with vocalists John Cowan and Joan Osborne, banjo player Jens Kruger and The Waybacks.
Frankly, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed live music quite as much as the hour long performance I just experienced.
Obviously, with such excellent source material as the Beatles’ legendary studio opus, it seems like it would be impossible to go wrong, but material that well-known is a decidedly double-edged sword. It’s almost impossible to live up to a suite of music that well known, and if you try, your performance is automatically put under microscopic scrutiny. I think tonight’s show easily survived that scrutiny.
Without the CSO and conductor Robert Bernhardt, The Waybacks and company might have fallen short of achieving the Beatles brilliance. There’s a reason “Abbey Road” was never performed live. Its intricacies and nuances were so heaped upon one another that to attempt to recreate it live would require, as it did tonight, a full orchestral backing. This was an exciting opportunity to experience the album in what I think is the form closest to how it would have been performed by the Fab Four live.
Judging by the empty blanket seating area and surprising amount of open spots throughout the Coke Lawn, many of you were reluctant to bet on something as potentially uncertain as a “mystery rock revue.” I happened to be right when I bet on “Abbey Road” earlier, and if you are any kind of Beatles fan, you should be kicking yourself if you happened to miss it. I only wish I had the stones to join the man who was dancing as if in a dream by himself where families on blankets would normally have been.
Guitarist/singer/songwriter James Nash, who founded The Waybacks, led us on a brilliant rendition that played to the ensemble’s strengths. Cowan is the human equivalent of vocal dynamite, which I think was obvious to everyone after he lit into “Oh! Darling” (“Carry That Weight” was another standout).
Not to be outdone, Osborne showed she can dance like a Bond girl and fit vocal tongue and groove as the lead on “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).”
The Waybacks and Kruger added incredibly spicy acoustic accompaniment in just the right places. If you think fiddle sounds like a weird ingredient to add to “The End” and “Her Majesty,” you haven’t heard Warren Hood give it a go. He made it sound, well, the word “good” comes to mind, but it doesn’t do it justice. On the same song, Nash proved he’s got killer guitar chops that made me want to cut off my fingers I was so envious.
I know this comes across as a Beatles’ fan gushing, and I’ve never made a secret of my idol worship of the Liverpoolians, but I also scrutinize groups that cover them much more than I do tributers of any other group. This was, hands down, the best performance of Beatles music I’ve ever heard, including Abbey Road Live!, the Athens, Ga.-based group that make a living doing just this kind of tribute show.
If there’s one thing that fans of the Beatles can take away from tonight, it’s that to really do their studio work justice requires a full-on orchestra backing. The CSO’s performance was just ideal to accompany this show. It seriously couldn’t have been done, well or not, without them. We should be proud to count such a group of musicians among our ranks.
Although the show was fairly short, at just an hour long, I’ve never been so entertained for that length of time. The cherry on top, however, was when we, the audience took to our collective feet and showed such appreciation that Nash came back out on stage.
“We didn’t know Chattanooga was going to be this kind to us, so we didn’t prepare anything (as an encore),” he said. “Give us a second, and we’ll make something up.”
I’ve gotta say, I envy their ability to improvise, if their bopping rendition of “I Saw Her Standing There” really was done on the fly. The awesome riffs seemed too good to be the product of flying by the seat of your pants, but these guys had already demonstrated they had incredible chops. I can’t say I would have had high hopes for “Beatles banjo,” which Nash asked Kruger for, but he certainly delivered the goods.
All in all, the best time I’ve had at Riverbend … ever. It’s hard to see how it can get any better than this.