On Sunday, June 7, the Wheels of Soul rolled through town and just kept going, one dazzling and dizzying guitar solo after drum solo after trumpet solo after the next. With a lineup stacked with some of our day’s heaviest-hitters of retro-revivalist rock and soul – the Tedeschi-Trucks Band, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, and Doyle Bramhall II -- it was a night so blissfully jammy that the curfew itself felt like a crime. If only those Wheels could have kept rolling all night.
Doyle Bramhall II opened the evening with a set of stalwart blues-rock numbers. Bramhall II and band’s style is to start with a straightforward blues line, chug along, and then burn it down with a fiery guitar solo, courtesy of Bramhall. On songs like “She’s Alright” and “Green Light Girl,” he didn’t reinvent any wheels but spruced and revved up old ones – classic rock that out-classes collaborater Clapton, with moments evocative even of Hendrix.
The Dap Kings came on next, opening with a pair of songs from The Dapettes, Jones’ backup singers Saundra Williams and Starr Duncan. Leading lady Sharon Jones followed, sparkling in a purple sequined dress, and the pint-sized performer packed more punch, more pizzazz, and more personality than the combined sum of hundreds of rockers half her age. Though I have never seen James Brown perform live, I imagine Jones – who has collaborated with the late soul-god’s daughters – channels a comparable level of fire. She shimmied, twisted, jerked, and boogaloo’d her way through a set of new hits and soul standards, from her own single “Stranger To My Happiness” to a pepped-up cover of “Heard It Through the Grapevine.” Most memorably, on her song “Get Up and Get Out,” Jones recalled her struggles through cancer – “My hands, my feet, my whole body was very weak, I couldn’t move more than 10 feet,” she said. As she sashayed across the stage, declaring “I’m alive!” the true soul-survivor showed the Bowl her power to revive and inspire – the crowd lifted from their seats.