Davy Knowles and Jorma Kaukonen at The Essex Experience Summer Concert Series

As serendipitous as was the confluence of circumstances that brought Davy Knowles and Jorma Kaukonen to The Essex Experience Summer Music Series, it was all the more providential that both men gave solo performances on two late summer night dates so close to each other. For the former, this first stop in Vermont since just prior to the pandemic found him on the threshold of releasing another studio album with a band even as he consolidated his multi-faceted approach to the stage by touring on his own. For the latter, the concluding stop on his own itinerary confirmed his desire to keep playing in the acoustic format after bidding adieu to electric Hot Tuna in the fall of 2023. Davy Knowles and Jorma Kaukonen are both gracious men of impressive talents whose healthy egos mirror their technical skills and given the solitary setting of their concerts in the Green Mountains, the open air events comprised a fascinating study in contrasts: the respective timelines of these men parallel each other in almost eerily similar fashion.



Davy Knowles
The Old Stage
The Essex Experience Summer Concert Series
Essex Junction, Vermont
August 22, 2024

Davy Knowles' If I Should Wander (Self-produced, 2023) is one of the best albums of 2023. The collection of eleven tracks, sequenced on record as they were recorded, effectively depict the coming of age by a man doing yeoman's work to fully integrate his personal and professional lives. Little wonder that he has named his string of solo shows after that LP.

The Isle of Man native displayed much the same combination of maturity and poise on The Old Stage as on the aforementioned longplayer. Much more fluent in his between song repartee than the earnest but somewhat scattered shared thoughts proffered by opening act Jeffrey Gaines, Knowles charmed a crowd of loyalists about the same size as those who've filled the small room at Higher Ground since 2014 (some of whom loudly acclaimed the musician's recollections of his earliest visits to the Burlington Vermont area as titular leader of the blues-rock trio Back Door Slam).

Yet even if he had not come across so ingratiating in his good-humored spoken word interludes, Davy Knowles' vigorous guitar work and singing of choice of material would've won over his audience. He smartly interlaced originals dating back to his initial solo works—"First Words of a Changing Man" was just one—with discerning outside material such as John Hiatt's "Slow Turning" plus two selections from his self-professed hero Rory Gallagher: "Out Of My Mind" and the late Irish bluesman's cover of Tony Joe White's "As The Crow Flies" served as an appropriately rousing dual close to the single set proper.

Beginning with some speedy fretwork on the opening instrumental "New Jersey Turnaround," Knowles took plenty of time to extemporize without ever losing the essential threads of the tunes. Followers who relish his predilection to improvise might've been surprised he so prominently placed his natural tendency to jam within the context of a solo acoustic show, but neither they nor more casual fans would've been any less delighted to hear his workouts on the eight-string mandolin like "The Burro."

All the more so the abandoned bottleneck work on a resonator guitar: Davy Knowles has now reached a point where he practically transcends the blues that formed the initial impetus to the performing and songwriting prowess now very clearly at his command. On this cool moist evening, he gave every indication he will age as gracefully as the man who occupied the same stage two nights later.



Jorma Kaukonen
The Old Stage
The Essex Experience Summer Concert Series
Essex Junction, Vermont
August 24, 2024

Very much a kindred spirit of Davy Knowles, Jorma Kaukonen is a man who cut his teeth on heroes of the blues genre that includes, but is not limited to, Reverend Gary Davis. That man's "Death Don't Have No Mercy" was one of the touchpoints of a relaxed two-set offering that also featured the same author's "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed & Burning" as the penultimate number.

It was an ever so apt lead-in to the introspective and slightly melancholy original, "Genesis," that served as the finale. More than the mawkish "Things That Might've Been" or an ode to the site of his earliest musical stardom, "San Francisco Bay Blues," it was a tacit ode to the passage of time even more evocative than "Another Man Done Gone." Roughly two hours prior, after walking gingerly to his seat on the stage, Kaukonen proceeded to root around in a well-rounded mix of vintage covers ("Hesitation Blues") and his own alternately whimsical and heartwarming originals ("I See The Light," "Trial By Fire").

In doing so, he uncovered nooks and crannies of melody and rhythm in the songs, revelations that come only from decades of familiarity with the material. Hardly lacking in his quiet engagement with the audience, Kaukonen nevertheless reminded of no one so much as the aged blues icons upon whose work he cut his teeth over a half-century ago. His voluminous body of work with Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna, plus an extensive solo career, compares favorably with the work of his heroes.

Yet, in the most practical terms, it's also accurate to liken the burly white-haired, bearded musician/songwriter to the veteran baseball pitcher who no longer overwhelms with his speed or ball movement, but craftily chooses to mix up his pitches to garner his strikes. Apart from the designated jam section of "Good Shepherd," Jorma Kaukonen didn't engage in many lengthy improvisations on The Old Stage, but instead played around within his selections.

On "Uncle Sam Blues," for instance, he regularly hurried his often-whispered vocals or strung out his delivery of the words (and he sometimes seemed to mumble the lyrics). Meanwhile, he dropped more than a few quiet flourishes from his fretboard and not just in the form of the harmonics that he sprinkled amongst the chording he so often used to finish his chosen numbers: on the fingerpicking of "Sea Child," the drama was palpable, yet the definition of understatement.

Kaukonen thus elicited largely reverent applause from an audience roughly twice that of Davy Knowles' two nights prior (and alcohol-sodden chatterboxes were few and far between). Still, except for some good-humored responses to comments from attendees, there was little patter in his roughly two hours on the stage.

When the man did deign to speak—as in his laughing comments about "prostituting" himself to mention the sales of merch available as means to put an offspring through college (at the University of Vermont no less!)—there was more than a little of the wry and self-effacing attitude by which he's always solidified his connection with attendees of his performances.

Setlists

August 22, 2024

NJ Turnaround; Riverbed; The Great Charade: Never Gonna Be The Same; Come Home; Taking You With Me; Slow Turning; Drunk Mind Sober Heart; Coming Up For Air; Bridal Veil Falls;The Burroo; Country Girls; First Words; Saving Myself; Don't You Think So; Out Of My Mind; As The Crow Flies; Roll Away; Tear Down The Walls.

August 24 2024

First Set: Been So Long; Hesitation Blues; Barbeque King; Second Chances; Letter To The North Star; Great Divide Revisited; Death Don't Have No Mercy; Sea Child; Soliloquy For 2; Ain't In No Hurry; How Long Blues; Ice Age. Second Set: I See The Light; Day To Day Out the Window Blues; Uncle Sam Blues; Flying Clouds; Trial By Fire; Good Shepherd; Nobody Knows You When You're Down & Out; That'll Never Happen No More; Ode To Billy Dean; Things That Might Have Been; San Francisco Bay Blues; Another Man Done Gone; Keep Your Lamps Trimmed & Burning. Encore: Genesis.

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