Follow up to last week’s Feature, we review Jesse Welles Nashville concert. Jesse Welles might be best know for his provocative lyrics sung over folk guitar and harmonica, signing today’s news, but his performance at The Pinnacle showed he is a more complicated showman. On Friday, October 16, he brought that showmanship to his Nashville concert at The Pinnacle at Nashville Yards, with Hudson Freeman opening the night.
The stage sported a mockup of a high tension tower and electrical wires mirroring the set of albums (a 149 song effort) “Under The Powerlines” Welles has released over the past two years. No flames or pyrotechnics. No spotlights flashing the audience. Just a simple straight forward statement echoing the no holds barred straight forward lyrics in the string of songs put together for the show.
No surprise that the lyrical theme of the evening was a consistent critical reflection on current events. The show began with Welles solo acoustic rendition of The Nerd Reich. Then, as the full band takes to the stage, the sound increasingly builds in intensity until it culminated with the hard driving cover of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs. While most of what Welles offers on his recordings is rooted in folk, the performances on this tour show Jesse as a very accomplished guitarist with some ripping lead guitar. Part a throwback to his early days in his grunge band balanced by his Allman Brothers inspired dual-guitar harmonies.
Welles included two more covers in the set, Petty’s I Won’t Back Down and CCR’s Have You Ever Seen The Rain. Maybe the choice of these particular covers was how the themes of those selections matched the overall statement Welles is trying to make with his own material as much as a tribute to the bands. Welles eventually brought the hard driving rock back to the more intimate with The Poor and Everyone Who Hated Me Is Dead being just Jesse on guitar and harmonica but still demonstrating the intensity that helped build his fan base.
Find Welles’s tour dates and music at wellesmusic.com. For earlier coverage of the tour, read our Feature on the Red Tour.
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