Grace Potter, Peter Frampton Big Crowd Pleasers At Ives

By John Voket

It’s three down, six to go for the Ives Concert Park and its Union Savings Bank Summer Concert Series. The popular regional venue opened Monday, June 27, with a double bill of Michael Franti and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, hosted its second show July 1 with Peter Frampton, and welcomed Earth, Wind & Fire to the stage July 2.

A second run of headliner concerts resumes July 25 with Steely Dan. Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas arrive July 27, Guster hits the stage August 3, with the J Geils Band featuring Peter Wolf August 13, the Beach Boys August 14 and ZZ Top wrapping things up Texas-style on August 25.

While she closed the set with the band’s popular early hit “Nothing But the Water,” Potter really got into the spirit of things by kicking off her high heels and dangling her toes in the water surrounding the stage, which is actually on a manmade island in the middle of a pond at the rustic venue.

About 90-minutes earlier, the gathering crowd who also came to see co-headliner Michael Franti and Spearhead got the show off to a rocking start with the pounding beat of Burr’s drums and Potter spinning and dancing feverishly to the opening notes of “Medicine,” from her latest project.

She continued, enthusiastically leading bandmates Scott Tournet, bassist Catherine Popper, and guitarist Benny Yurco through a fantastically reworked “Joey” and “Mastermind” from the 2007 album This is Nowhere.

Tourney lent some sweet harp to a reggae-fied “Goodbye Kiss,” which also seemed to grab the audience with its mainstream feel and tropical flavor, but the band really started cooking with a viciously rocking “Stop The Bus.”

From Burr’s Jon Bonham-inspired intro, through several tempo transitions, this song in its current iteration really showcased to longtime fans the distance this band has come in its ability to take an already great number and juicing it up to make it even more appealing for a concert audience.

Utilizing a variety of crowd-pleasing enhancements between the vocals and instrumentation, Potter strapped on her Flying V and veered into a double-time jam at the end that was reminiscent of a fist-pumping live version of Skynard’s “Free Bird.”

Then, like entering the eye of a hurricane, Potter switched things up, donning a warm-sounding acoustic guitar and sharing vocals with Tournet playing the Kenny Chesney role on her country debut, “You And Tequila.” She even gave props to Yurco for a “super Nashville guitar solo.”

Confiding she wanted to do one that wasn’t on the setlist, Potter then dialed the energy back even further with a sparse version of “Falling or Flying,” which evoked a very smoky mood with a rootsy acoustic treatment.

“Tiny Lights” provided some opportunity for wonderful vocal and instrumental dynamics, with four-part harmonies, and yet another furious jam that illustrated just what this band can do now that it has added Yurco’s second guitar stylings to the instrumental lineup.

Whether it was cleverly rehearsed or completely spontaneous, there was a moment during this number when all five band members seemed oblivious to each other, thrashing and flailing their heads around in apparent musical abandon while the crowd went nuts.

Then, as Potter literally pranced around the stage to the gradually slowing beat, the band oozed into an electrifying slow blues pattern for “Big Headed Woman.”

Wrapping the main set with more new material, “Hot Summer Night” and “Paris,” kept everyone on their feet.

Frampton Alive & Well

Frampton, who is on tour celebrating the 35th anniversary of the release of Frampton Comes Alive, proved he still has what it takes to keep an audience mesmerized. He performed the album, including three of the four numbers dropped from the original LP because of space limitations, during an opening first set.

Frampton then returned for another hour-plus encore set that was equally, if not more, entertaining, showcasing some of the spectacular instrumental material from his 2006 Grammy winning Fingerprints and a wonderful tribute to his parents, who gave him his first musical instrument.

Following the opening song, “Something’s Happening,” Frampton said he was going to play the live album in the order it was recorded, instead of the order it appeared on vinyl. He then moved through “Doobie Wah” and the ballad “Lines on My Face” before bringing the audience to its feet with the million-seller hit “Show Me the Way.”

The artist, accompanied by a crack band featuring Rob Arthur on keyboards, guitar, backing vocals, John Regan on bass, Adam Lester on guitar, and Dan Wojciechowski on drums, rolled through the set with enthusiasm and some self-effacing humor, opting to change a line in “All I Wanna Be (Is By Your Side)” making a reference to the fact that he’s lost most of the hair he didn’t care about cutting in the original recording.

While the three missing songs from the album, “Just the Time of Year,” “Nowhere’s Too Far (For My Baby),” and “White Sugar,” were performed well, they were also clearly part of the body of material written for the original LP, featuring similarly structured power chord progressions and melodic hooks. For some reason, Frampton opted to not perform the final unpublished song from Frampton Comes Alive, “Day’s Dawning,” which was finally included with its three missing companion pieces on a 25th Anniversary CD release in 2001.

“Do You Feel Like We Do” was another crowd pleaser with an extended guitar jam and the obligatory use of Frampton’s voice box device that produced robotic-sounding tones as he mouthed words to the song.

What the first set provided in terms of familiar vocally oriented material, the second set showcased its package of instrumental songs. And since most of the audience stuck around to hear it, they were exposed to the true talent and artistry that Frampton brings to the contemporary music scene.

The band showed no restraint, plowing through “Asleep at The Wheel,” “Restraint,” which featured a Pink Floyd-like dual guitar solo, and a funky, organ-driven “Boot It Up.” Switching to acoustic guitar, Frampton performed a country-flavored finger picked “Double Nickels” before strapping on his trademark Gibson Les Paul for a slow smoking remake of “All I Want To Be.”

The highpoint of set two, however, was a heartfelt tribute to Frampton’s parents called “Vaudeville Nanna and the Banjolele,” which recounts the story of receiving his first instrument, a ukulele that he apparently still owns and plays during the introduction to the song.

Information about the venue and the remaining shows at Ives, including the Newtown Savings Bank Fine Arts & Family Series can be accessed at Ivesconcertpark.com. Tickets for the main stage concerts are available at Premierconcerts.com.