You could tell JD McPherson was in performance mode the instant he walked onstage Saturday night at The Burl. No sooner had he strapped on a guitar than he turned to a patron snapping his picture, flashed the pearly whites and gave a confident wink. From there, the Oklahoma rocker was, as they say, off to the races.
Musically, the tireless and endlessly fun 80-minute performance adhered to what McPherson fans are already familiar with – an encyclopedia of retro rock and pop inspirations rewired with fresh compositional frameworks, expert instrumentation and a sense of spirit as joyous as it was combustible when presented in a concert setting.
What was different from past Lexington outings, however, was the repertoire. This was the penultimate show in a tour that relied heavily on material from McPherson’s 2018 Christmas album “Socks.” Over half of the setlist was devoted to 10 of the record’s 11 tunes, all of which revealed the same rootsy echoes – but also the same modern thinking – as the bandleader’s non-holiday music.
What the “Socks” songs reflected was a scholarly command of the harmonies, melodies, riffs and sheer performance drive of decades-old pop records. The early ‘60s music of Elvis Presley was an obvious reference, right down to the punctuation of the Jordanaires-style backing vocals supplied by three members of McPherson’s band. But none of the music ever succumbed to becoming a strictly revivalist exercise. McPherson’s wordplay saw to that, especially during the show-opening “Bad Kid” – a clever, smartly paced rocker that was as much Nick Lowe as vintage Elvis in its cunning saga of a black leather jacketed miscreant proud of earning “a permanent place on the naughty list.”
The mood turned more unapologetically coy for “Holly, Carol, Candy and Joy,” a double-entendre laced holiday party piece punctuated by inventive vocal phrasing from McPherson and band along with the playful backbeat of drummer Alex Hall.
The non-holiday material was just as potent, placing greater emphasis on an economical but potent guitar blend co-piloted by McPherson and Doug Corcoran. For “You Must Have Met Caroline,” it was as simple as a monstrous one note blast by Corcoran that detonated McPherson’s rhythm playing. Then on “Head Over Heels,” the drive was mounted by an elemental earworm of a riff from the bandleader.
McPherson remarked that he was “battling something” during the show, as in a flu bug, but it wasn’t until the concert’s closing tunes that he appeared to be straining. Liuckily, he had reinforcements. The audience knew his material enough to sing along with – and, at times, in place of – the host.
Adding immensely to the fun was a 40-minute opening by Chicago guitarist Joel Paterson who dressed like Dave Brubeck and played like a cross between Merle Travis and Kenny Burrell. He offered his own instrumental slant on non-original holiday fare by giving “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” a Buck Owens-friendly facelift and redoing “White Christmas” as a lounge-style reverie.
Much of the set was augmented by recorded tracks (“That’s not cheating, is it?”). Since the tracks were largely layers of his own playing, they actually added to the modest irreverence and technical sophistication of Paterson’s performance. Stabs at Beatles material like “I Saw Her Standing There” and “All My Loving” were added in as trackless solo exhibitions full of clever rhythmic shifts and pristine tone.
Paterson also teamed up with McPherson for a three-song holiday encore that concluded the concert with the finale tune to “Socks,” the wide-eyed percussive rockabilly cocktail “Twinkle (Little Christmas Lights).” It was a robust conclusion to this musically fashionable blast of a holiday party.
The Musical Box 