SFJAZZ presents Barbara Dane: 90th Birthday Celebration featuring the Tammy Hall Trio, the Chambers Brothers, and Pablo Menéndez
Robert M. Miner Auditorium
SFJAZZ Center, 205 Franklin St, San Francisco, CA 94102 USA
7:30 PM, Thursday, July 13, 2017

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[7:42 PM lights down, brief introductory film, band out; 7:45 PM BD enters to standing ovation]

1. [7:45 PM] (unidentified tune; lyric “could be illicit”)
2. [7:50 PM] Throw It Away
3. [7:57 PM] American Tune
   [add Joe and Willie Chambers for a pair of a capella gospel tunes]
4. [8:02 PM] Come by Here
5. [8:06 PM] Go Tell It on the Mountain
   [band joins back in]
6. [8:11 PM] It Isn't Nice &
   [add Pablo]
7. [8:16 PM] People Get Ready (JC/WC) & [drop Joe and Willie]
8. [8:22 PM] How Long ‡
9. [8:28 PM] On Your Way Down †
   [add Joe and Willie Chambers]
10. [8:35 PM] Together We Can Move Mountains (PM/DJ/WC/BD)
    [set ends 8:40 PM; all off after a minute or two]

[9:08 PM lights down, band out]

1. [9:09 PM] In My Life
   [add Pablo; long stretch of banter]
2. [9:19 PM] Havana Blues (PM) †
3. [9:23 PM] All Too Soon †
4. [9:30 PM] King Salmon Blues ‡
   [drop Pablo]
5. [9:40 PM] The Eggplant That Ate Chicago
6. [9:45 PM] Be Reasonable
   [add Pablo]
7. [9:54 PM] My Brain †
   [set ends; ~10:01 PM Nina Menéndez enters with a Birthday cake; Joe and Willie Chambers follow; the band a crowd sing both the Happy Birthday song and a Spanish equivalent; after a few minutes, Barbara decides to do an Encore]
    
   Encore
8. [10:04 PM] Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around †
9. [10:09 PM] (unidentified tune; lyric “Tomorrow Is Another Day”, BD/PM)
   [show ends 10:15 PM; this time they're really done; all off after a minute or so]

• Barbara Dane: vox.

• Ruth Davies: contrabass, electric contrabass;
• Tammy Hall-Hawkins: piano;
• Daria Johnson: drums, lead (s1t10) and harmony vox.

• Joe Chambers: lead (s1t08) and harmony vox;
• Willie Chambers: & guitar, lead (s1t08, t10) and harmony vox;

• Pablo Menéndez: † guitar, ‡ harmonica, lead (s2t02, t09) and harmony vox.

Well, advertising this gig as a Birthday Celebration seems a bit goofy considering that Barbara was born on May 12, but I suppose that a longer ceremonial period is permissible given the milestone achieved! And Barbara was in fine form – moving really well (with the aid of her walker), standing for a few tunes, and belting out many of the songs with plenty of lung power. She's certainly still pretty sharp; although now and then her attention would lapse and she'd exhibit a classic senior moment, she'd usually recover with a wink or a shrug or some other signal to show us that recognized it and was moving on.

The performance and tune selection was uniformly excellent; my favorite for the night being Barbara's take on Allen Toussaint's On Your Way Down – it was all too easy to hear between the lines and make it out as a message to the many losers grubbing their way to the top of the global shit-pile irregardless of the rest of us.

I was really surprised that Lester Chambers was absent from tonight's party given that we just saw him at the Surrealistic Summer Solstice Concert a few weeks ago. Since all three of the brothers appeared to be pretty healthy, and there aren't any conflicted events shown on Lester's band page, in the absence of any other sort of evidence, I'm gonna guess that there's a bit of sibling resentment at the root of that mystery.

While I'm sorry that I missed Barbara's late April gig at the Kuumbwa in Santa Cruz, tonight was plenty good, and honestly, I probably would have skipped this one if I'd made it to the Kuumbwa show: it was a great evening, but not the sort of entertainment that I'm looking to sample all that often.

Rusty Aceves posted a nice promo piece about Barbara for SFJAZZ.

Kevin Vance devoted part of his July 9 radio show to Barbara; he's posted the playlist and you can hear the archived stream of it via KPFA. Jump ahead to 0:21:58 if you want to start with Kevin's introduction of Nina and Barbara; this segment ends 1:04:25.

If you'd like to read more about Barbara's accomplishments, Michael Healy wrote a great biographical article for Oakland Magazine in 2015.

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2017 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2017 event list! ☸ On to the next event!