Growing Season

On Willy Porter’s website I noticed that he landed #20 on Al Kooper’s cream of the ’09 musical crop back in January in Kooper’s review for the Boston Herald. In 1970 something, Al Kooper was the cream of the crop for me and still his writing and music resonate greatly with me. Last February, I attended BB King’s for the legendary Kooper’s Birthday Celebration. It was a great mix of solo Al and special guests including Kristina Train, Rich Pagano, Jack Petruzelli and Jimmy Vivino. The only downside of the evening was not having enough money to get my car out of the parking garage after the show and walking back to 42^nd Street hoping my partner was still around to pay my ticket. While I’m walking on memory lane, outside the Commonwealth Hotel in Boston after a Fab Faux show at Berklee College of Music two years ago, Jimmy V introduced me to Al and his lovely wife Susan who were picking him up at the hotel. Meeting Al was one of my favorite moments and I treasure it. Last week’s favorite moment arrived a little after seven Friday night at the Rubin Museum in Manhattan. My friends and I were running late for the show because of the traffic on the GW bridge, didn’t have tickets and I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to find parking. However, we made it with minutes to spare, a parking garage magically appeared around the corner and tickets were still available. At seven I was sitting with my friends in the Rubin Museum of Art’s cherry wood lined theatre, fully clothed, for my first experience of Naked Soul. For the uninitiated, the acoustics in this very special space are phenomenal and the music is unplugged and acoustic. After the stressful trip into the city at that moment for me to be unplugged I would have needed a martini however Willie Porter, accompanied by Mona Tavakoli of Raining Jane and Natalia Zuckerman were amazing and the music worked it’s magick. I’ve heard Willy a handful of times, my partner and I even booked him to play for our town’s Summer Concert Series in 2008, but this show held a different meaning. The intimate setting and the delicate juxtaposition of the artwork and music offered another dimension of the soul of the music. The first time I heard Willy Porter was the opposite end of the spectrum. In 1999 he was opening for David Bromberg at Town Hall. It was the first appearance by Bromberg in eons as he had stopped touring to become a builder of violins. The crowd was rowdy from the beginning and when Porter took the stage they gave him such a hard time, as only a crowd suffering from Bromberg withdrawal can. I was astounded that a roomful of people could be that rude (drunk) but they heckled him relentlessly as if they were uptown at Showtime at the Apollo. Toward the end of his set, without missing a beat, he created a song on the spot using all the words the crowd had heckled him with. The crowd went crazy and what I experienced then was the power of a man and his guitar. Willy Porter was and is brilliant. The setting at the Rubin Museum of Art allowed him to sparkle and shine. My favorite Friday night moment flowed into an hour and a half of moments that were cream of the crop for the season for me……a really beautiful spring growing season.