Jonathan Wilson
Visulite Theatre
May 15, 2012
Jonathan Wilson’s concert at the Visulite Theatre on Tuesday night quickly turned into a Charlotte ’90s music scene homecoming. The N.C. native who began his musical career here as a teen before making his way to New York, then L.A., returned for a rare appearance that drew a good weeknight crowd of fans, friends, local musicians and family (including his parents).
These days, Wilson and his heralded CD, Gentle Spirit, are making huge waves in Britain and Europe; here he counts numerous industry heavy hitters amongst his friends and collaborators. This night, though, the focus was squarely on Wilson’s own patchouli-tinged mystic rock grooves.
He and his crack band (really, you can’t compliment this outfit enough, individually or collectively) opened with a grooving “The Way I Feel.” Things then heated up with “Rolling Universe,” Wilson’s incendiary guitar workout the match to our kindling. A wonderful extended version of “Natural Rhapsody” featured Charlotte jazz scene mainstay Ziad on guest saxophone (Wilson played as a teen with Ziad, so it was a nice student-pays-back-teacher sort of moment). Other notables include “Desert Raven” and the hallucinatory “Valley of the Silver Moon.”
Jenny O. opened the evening – I missed her but folks were raving, particularly about her voice.
She was followed by our own indomitable Benji Hughes, who was in immediate shirtless party mode, no doubt stoked from hanging out with Wilson, his old musical partner in the stellar ‘90s local band Muscadine.
We got strong versions of “Vibe So Hot,” “All You’ve Got to Do is Fall In Love with Me,” and “I Went with Some Friends to See the Flaming Lips,” with its line – “Charlotte people on tour” – drawing the usual
big applause at this hometown gig. And it was a fitting reference, as Wilson and his band are soon heading to Europe to open for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
This article appears in May 15-22, 2012.
Great show, I was disappointed in the size of the crowd though.
Great review Kathleen. The show was incredible and am so glad he made a stop here in Charlotte in support of his new album.
Joy Gray
crowd was weak, charlotte crowds are always weak
Addendum: Oh yeah, forgot about the Benji-instigated “guitar duel” at the end of the night HA… “There’s gonna be a guitar fight, does anyone think that’s cool?,” Benji said after his set up… Yes… after a few minutes Jonathan accepted the challenge…”Play some Muscadine!” someone yelled…They obliged with an electric/acoustic take on Benji’s “Jubalee,” a tune actually worked up in the Muscadine days… Perfect….But who won the duel??? 😉 — kj
Addendum #2: crowd was slightly weak in size, but there in spirit …and yellin NC-proud… and least on the fresh recording i just obtained… 😉
‘Fresh Recording’ is being refined…
Stay TUNEd. 😉