Soul-aching guitar solos and gritty vocals singing of life’s greatest mysteries: love and loss, joy and sorrow — the pains of existence. Anders Osborne’s two-night Holiday Spectacular was a weekend replete with icons of various New Orleans music genres. A celebration of the holiday season in typical New Orleans fashion, his material ranged from the familiar intense shredding guitar solos in songs such as “Had My Reasons” to the smooth melodic crescendo of “Big Talk.”
The first show on December 20, 2019, featured special guests G. Love, John Mooney, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux and The Golden Eagles. We got a even more in a grooving second night of New Orleans’ classics featuring Steve Earle, Helen Gillet, and Alvin Youngblood Hart with unexpected appearances by Leyla McCalla and Eric Benny Bloom. In addition, David Torkanowsky played the keys, Ron Johnson slapped the bass, and Chad Cromwell rocked the drums.
Big Chief Monk Boudreaux set the tone for the first night showcasing the power of music by singing, “Sometimes the Blues can make you happy, and sometimes the Blues can make you sad. I’ve been there so many times over and over again.” A simple line that hits home in the heart of New Orleans and speaks to Osborne’s own philosophy of music when he told OffBeat in May, “When I write and make music, my thought process is ‘What kind of stuff do people need to hear?’ For my fans and my crowd, who are all now 35 to 75-plus, you’ve got cancer, divorce, addictions, children dying, parents who have died.” Boudreaux knows as well as Osborne that music plays a special role in release and redemption, and an opportunity to play with heart and soul in front of a crowd walking through the pains of life should never be missed.
Apparent in the mean opening riff of “Let It Go,” in which Osborne sings “Haunted by the sound of your own heartbeat” into the powerful reminder to “Let it go man,” Osborne was not going to miss this opportunity to sing his story. With an unexpected trippy transition into “Trippin in Montana” and a killer guitar solo, he instantly reminded everybody why he won OffBeat’s Best of the Beat Best Guitarist award four times.
Anders Osborne and friends perform in December 2019. Photo by Bryce Jenkins
However, shredding the guitar is not Osborne’s only calling card. His rich song writing delivered a poignant political statement on the troubling times of 2019 by singing, “Nothing changes yet nothing stays the same / No use trying to find somebody to blame / We keep living like the end is near / We’re only people bewildered by love and fear.” It was powerful statement speaking to the uselessness of division and hate in attacking the problems we should all face together. In singing for unity and understanding, he confronted some of the most controversial conversations facing the upcoming election. He wondered, “Now here we are staring down at 2020 / Transgender being out in the army / Black Lives Matter, take three and women’s rights / I can’t believe that we’re still having these fights.” Having the courage to sing about these issues calls back to Osborne’s statement to OffBeat in May: “I think the boundaries should be moved by the artist, otherwise you’re just an entertainer. An artist will lose his job, his listeners, fans, gonna lose money, relationships, because of the art.”
Osborne constantly keeps his performances new and captivating in the pursuit of authenticity. Each concert differentiates and creates its own feel. He sings from the soul and speaks what’s on his mind. He concluded with the chilling line, “Social media is where we do our bidding now, classrooms where we do our killing now.” While he knows these issues are divisive, he recognizes that art plays a special role in our society to bring us together and true art must begin with honesty.
He told OffBeat, “My passion is to be the philosopher and poet that spent enough quality time by the window thinking about this and try to voice that for people that don’t have the time to do this.” When you go to an Anders Osborne concert, you know he will play and sing straight from the heart, and that is what makes it such an incredible experience. Near the end of the first show, he took some time to speak directly to the crowd about loss saying, “I know we’ve lost a lot of people this year, that passed away. Of course we’re mourning, there’s a lot of people like John that’s still around working hard. Support musicians still alive because you never know what’s going on.”
Just as music has the power to bring us together, it also has the power to tackle life’s hardest struggles with light-heartedness and joy. After taking a moment to remember all the great New Orleans’ musicians lost this year, Mooney, G-Love and Osborne broke into a song everybody in the Crescent City will be happy to hear — “Drinka Little Poison (4 U Die).” It was a cheerful reminder that we are all in this journey together, and we may as well have fun with it by celebrating the music, food, and drink that make this community so special.
