by Michael McCarthy
Last night I saw Matthew and Gunnar Nelson perform at City Winery in Boston, Massachusetts.
I’ve seen Matthew and Gunnar Nelson perform quite a few times during recent years. They frequently play The Wolf Den, the free club venue at Mohegan Sun Casino, but the last three times I saw them there they were not performing their own songs. Two of the shows were Ricky Nelson Remembered shows where they only played music by their late dad, the legendary oldies singer Ricky Nelson, and the other show was a Christmas music show. They did do an original Christmas song that they wrote at the Christmas show but otherwise it was all covers of famous Christmas songs. But the point is that the last three times I saw Nelson they were not doing their original songs from albums like After The Rain or Because They Can. And it’s always been Matthew and Gunnar’s original music that has made me such a big fan of the duo. Suffice to say, when I heard that they were going to play City Winery and perform some of their original music, I knew I had to be there.
The show at City Winery was originally supposed to have been earlier this year. I believe the original date was in April. I only found out about it a couple of weeks before the show but I immediately bought a ticket and I was really looking forward to it. But the guys had been out on the road doing a few different dates and they ended up getting sick and had to cancel so the show was rescheduled for August 7th.
As it turns out, they almost had to cancel last night’s show. They were flying up from Nashville, which is where they reside these days, but all flights were grounded the night before last so their flight was canceled. Then they had to reschedule their flights to Boston but there was another complication because their guitars were on another plane or the wrong plane or something like that so they had to deal with getting new flights for themselves as well as their guitars. If I understood them correctly when they spoke last night, they hadn’t slept in about 48 hours because of this airport nightmare scenario they encountered. Fortunately, they were able to get things squared away and they decided to perform in Boston after all.
I was surprised that Nelson were playing City Winery because I’ve never heard of any bands that could be associated with hair metal playing City Winery before. City Winery tends to have a lot of younger singer/songwriters performing there. Again, I wasn’t aware of any bands of Nelson’s ilk playing there before. But last night Matthew and Gunnar performed with just their microphones and acoustic guitars, which was perfect for the City Winery setting.
Last night Matthew and Gunnar kicked off their 17 song set with a handful of their original songs beginning with “I Can Hardly Wait” and “More Than Ever,” two songs from their highly successful debut album After the Rain. Then they played “Only Time Will Tell,” one of my favorite Nelson songs, but they only played the first verse and the chorus then they stopped it. I was really disappointed that they didn’t play the whole song. If there was one song I really, really wanted them to do last night it was that one so it was frustrating that they stopped playing it halfway through. And I don’t know why they did that because people were singing along and seemed to be really enjoying it.
Most of the original Nelson songs that they did last night were from the After The Rain album. I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, it is true that After The Rain is my favorite Nelson album. And it was wonderful to finally hear them do “After The Rain” and “(Can’t Live Without Your) Love And Affection” live for the first time in many years. But they have many other terrific Nelson albums and it would have been great to hear them do songs from some of the others, too. If nothing else, they should have done, “(You Got Me) All Shook Up,” the lead single from their second U.S. album, Because They Can, which did get some airplay at the time even if grunge had taken over the music scene by then, essentially killing off the hair band era overnight.
The second half of last night’s show was largely songs by their late father, Ricky Nelson. They did most of his bigger hits, including “Travelin’ Man,” “Lonesome Town” and “Garden Party.” They also did Gene Pitney’s “Hello Mary Lou,” which Ricky Nelson had famously covered.
All in all, it was a very enjoyable show. It kind of felt like watching an episode of VH1’s Storytellers with Matthew and Gunnar telling stories in between most of the songs. My only complaint would be that the show was only 17 songs so I couldn’t help but wish they had done a few more songs and it would have been especially nice if they could have done a song or two from albums like Imaginator and The Silence is Broken. Still, after seeing them three times in a row where they did not do any of their original songs, it was definitely a breath of fresh air to hear some of those songs last night. If you were a fan of After The Rain like most people who were into rock and metal in the early 90s, then you won’t want to miss this tour.
Leave a Reply