Gig: Mose Allison

Mose Allison

Fleck Dance Theatre, Harbourfront Centre. Tuesday, June 30, 2009.

Mose Allison is an American piano player, singer and songwriter whose work straddles the line between jazz and blues. Allison has a light touch on the keys and a soft, unforced vocal style that's like a spoonful of sugar to go with oft-barbed, clever lyrics. For the rock'n'roll crowd, the usual touchstones include a big list of covers — perhaps best and most famous is The Who's rip through "Young Man Blues" on the Live at Leeds album.¹ This one was a bit of a last-minute pick for me. Despite all the time I spend pouring over concert listing and so on, the fact that Mose Allison was coming to town escaped my notice until less than a week before the event, and when I saw the listing, I felt a gut feeling that this was one to go to. As with a lot of legendary figures, I did have a bit of a sense of, "how many more chances will I get?".

Jazz gigs are a nice antidote to those indie shows where I feel like the oldest guy in the room. Besides a chance to see musicians with some seniority, the demographics of the crowd are pretty radically different than what I'm used to. As we stood in a queue waiting for the doors to open, looking around for anyone younger than me, I wondered to myself what percentage of the patrons could be divided into two camps: a) middle-aged couples agreeing with each other that CBC2 was better before they changed it and b) Seymour from Ghost World. While we stood there, the elevator door opened and Mose shuffled out, casually dressed with floppy hat and all, like any other old guy out throwing bread to the ducks at Harbourfront, looking for the door so he could get into his gig.

Once they let us in, I scored a seat fourth row centre and settled into the cozy space of the Fleck Theatre — a fancy room, but not in my regular rotation of venues. Nice sightlines, nice sound, though it comes with all of the Serious Show baggage — I saw an usher nearly tackle someone who dared to (gasp!) bring in a bottle of water. I suppose in the end I do appreciate a comfy seat, a clear view, very little chit-chat and no hordes of people texting during the show, although like anything taken to extremes it gets a bit much.²

All that aside, the show itself was pretty good. Allison (at showtime still casually dressed in slacks and sneakers) is still a working songwriter and didn't rely on his incredible catalog of songs from the '50's and '60's. Looking around, his late-career work seems to have been summed up by a pair of live releases from 2001 and the setlist at this show worked in similar territory, drawing from his '80's and '90's work like "Ever Since I Stole the Blues", "Certified Senior Citizen" and "Ever Since the World Ended". There were also some covers showing his superb interpretive ability, such as a slow, minor key version of Jimmie Davis' "You Are My Sunshine" and "Meet Me at No Special Place", a hit for Nat Cole's trio.³ No "Seventh Son" or "Parchman Farm", but that's kinda okay, too — I'd rather see an artist follow his muse rather than just trot out the hits.

Calling out the songs by number ("Number thirty-two, from the top!"), the piano was well-supported by his drummer (who looked like a retired school principal of Mose's vintage) and bassist (a couple decades younger) who kept the undercarriage percolating but knew when to push a little.⁴ Allison always had a laid-back style of playing, so age hasn't impacted his tempos as all — and he had no problem doubling up to a locomotive-like shuffle when required. His voice is only a titch less clear than when in his prime, but still full of subtle inflections.

This was a classy show and a good time. With no opener and a seventy-five minute set, including encores, it felt expensive by my standards — but some indulgences are worth it.

I have no media for this one, so I'll relent from my usual standard and pass along a couple YouTube clips from 2007 (here and here) that get across the feel of it. Usual caveats about lousy YouTube quality apply.

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¹ And, for any audience under forty, it's also always trotted out that "Allison" by The Pixies was written in tribute to Mose, but this probably says more about Frank Black's name-dropping tendencies and scales of perceived cool than anything about his music.

² I didn't challenge the "no photography" rule and didn't have the presence of mind to grab my camera from my bag when he walked right past us waiting outside the theatre, sigh.

³ Also in the setlist: "This Ain't Me", "What's Your Movie", "Molecular Structure" and a cover of "Baby Please Don't Go".

⁴ Poking around after the fact, it would appear that the bassist was a local pick-up by the name of Neil Swainson, and the drummer was John Sumner. Colorblind Brian makes the astute observation that "apparently [Mose] doesn't like to be hearing a back-beat, and sure enough the drummer kept his brushes going and shuffled us along," something that I had also noticed while musing on the fact that the drum kit appeared to be mic'ed only with two overhead microphones, and none on the bass drum.