For the second year in a row, Eddie 9V (aka Eddie 9 Volt) and his band are spending multiple February nights playing gigs in Colorado. Last year he played five shows in six nights, beginning with back-to-back shows in Denver and Boulder. This year he is playing four nights in a row, hitting Fort Collins, Manitou Springs, Denver, and Vail. This review covers his shows on February 22 at The Armory in Fort Collins, and February 24 at Denver’s Bluebird Theater.
If you’ve read the review I did of the Denver and Boulder shows last year (Back-to-Back Nights with Eddie 9V – Denver & Boulder – February 16 & 17 | Denver Entertainment Hub), you know that I think Eddie 9V is one of the most original and genuine new artists to come along in a long time. Generally promoted as a blues artist, his unique and infectious blend of blues, soul, funk, and pop create a style that is more akin to traditional rhythm and blues than to any other defined genre. His voice has been favorably compared to Al Green. He can crank out a scorching guitar solo with the best of them, but most of the time his playing is more soulful, funky, and subtle. Oh, he can definitely do the blues. But there is so much more to the “Eddie 9V Style” than just that.
Eddie (who’s birth name is Brooks Mason Kelly) has been touring for the better part of the last year in support of his third album release, Capricorn, which dropped at the end of January last year. While his first two releases were clearly blues albums with lots of soul and funk spliced in, Capricorn definitely (and quite deliberately) tipped the scales towards a more defined soul foundation. Given his genre spanning discography, it’s no wonder an Eddie 9V live show defies a specific genre definition.
Eddie’s back-up band for these two shows was partly familiar, partly new. Familiar was his brother Lane Kelly on bass, and Chad Mason on keys. New was David Green on drums. And somewhere in between was Leah Belle Faser on vocals (both backing and lead) and percussion. Faser provided vocal support on the Capricorn album. If you’ve seen the video for “Beg Borrow and Steal,” she’s standing between Eddie and the horn section, playing tambourine, and providing backup vocals.
The band is as tight as ever. Newcomer Green was rock solid, and absolutely killed it on his solo, played both nights during the Roosevelt Sykes’ cover “Driving Wheel.” Kelly is his reliable self on bass. Mason gets numerous solo opportunities within each set, and he and Eddie spend a lot of time playing off one another. And Faser adds significantly to the mix, both with her backing vocals, as well as her multiple opportunities at lead.
I will admit that I did miss Noah Sills’ saxophone, but as the song goes, “you can’t always get what you want.”
Thursday night’s show in Fort Collins consisted of two sets of nine songs each, each set 45 minutes long, separated by a 20-minute intermission. As is the norm for Eddie 9V sets, the eighteen songs played included a healthy dose of covers. Eddie is one of those artists who believes deeply in paying homage to the artists who came before him, and the list of covers he plays in his live sets is long and diverse. On Thursday night that list included covers from Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Roosevelt Sykes, Blind Faith, Howlin’ Wolf, J.J. Cale, and Alabama Shakes.
The original tunes drew heavily from more recent works, including four songs from Capricorn (“Beg Borrow And Steal”, “Missouri”, “It’s Going Down”, and “Yella Alligator”), and four songs that haven’t appeared on any of Eddie’s three studio releases (“Halo”, “The Come Up”, “Delta”, and “Saratoga”). The balance of the original tunes were those that have become standards of Eddie 9V live shows… “Little Black Flies”, “1945 (Cocaine And Rum)”, and the always show stopping “3AM In Chicago”.
Last night’s show in Denver was significantly shorter than the Fort Collins show, clocking in at an hour and ten minutes. It had an odd start time… doors didn’t open until 8:00 and Eddie and band didn’t take the stage until 10:00. Though the dozen songs played had a running time of 20 minutes less than the Fort Collins show, Eddie’s energy for the Denver show was visibly higher. That might have had something to do with the fact that on the day of the Fort Collins show he and the band had driven more than five hours from their gig the previous night. For the Denver show they only had to drive up from Colorado Springs.
All but one of the songs played in the Denver set were repeats from the Fort Collins set, with the order slightly shuffled. The one newcomer was a new song called “Sedona,” which featured Leah Bell Faser on lead vocals. (For the Fort Collins show, Faser sang lead vocals on the Blind Faith cover “Can’t Find My Way Home.”)
If you are one of the people who caught one of Eddie’s Colorado shows last year, you might have noticed, either Thursday or Saturday night, that he’s changed a bit. His hair is longer, and he is sporting a pair of muttonchops that rival what I wore in the 70’s. But more to the point, there is an added layer of on-stage confidence that really shouted out to me. There is a lot more banter with the crowd, including song introductions on nearly every tune, jokes, and anecdotes. He has always been good on stage, but on these two nights he was even better than that.
(I initially thought a lot of that was due, on Thursday, to the fact he was so happy to be playing to a sold-out house. That was a first for him in Colorado, a point he made mention of multiple times during the gig. He even mentioned it to me when we were chatting outside as he and the band were loading in. But when he did the same thing Saturday night, I decided it was just part of the maturation process that takes place when you spend so much time playing to live audiences.)
Another February, another successful set of dates for Eddie 9V in Colorado. As I wrap up this article, Eddie and crew have likely made their way to Vail, where they will be playing the last of their four Colorado shows, before heading Missouri, then on to Texas. For up-and-coming musical acts, life on the road seems to just go on and on. But listening to Eddie 9V, you get the sense that he wouldn’t have it any other way. On both Thursday and Saturday nights he was effusive in expressing his gratitude that crowds were showing up to see and hear him play. On Saturday night, as he marveled at the energy of the Bluebird crowd, he noted that the first time he and his band played in Denver, they played to “something like eight people.” He has come a long way since then. And given his talent, and his obvious willingness to pay his dues, it is certain that he’s got a tremendous amount of runway in front of him.
Story and photos by Rick Witt www.rickwittphotography.com
