The Bacon Brothers at Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant, Minneapolis (13 July 2018)

The Bacon Brothers is currently on tour for their self-titled album, stopping by the sold-out Dakota Jazz Club show in Minneapolis on Friday night.



Typically, these Dakota Jazz Club shows always begins with a warm and personal introduction from the restaurant owner Lowell Pickett … but for some reason, he was absent that Friday night. We hope it’s because he’s on a vacation and not because of ill health.



Special guest, California’s Cindy Alexander and her friend and guitarist Ali Handal came on stage addressing the bad luck associated with Friday the 13th by announcing, “What could possibly go wrong?”



As she tuned her guitar, Alexander mentioned how she ran into a small child called Oliver in the bathroom and decided to dedicate the opening track, “I See Stars” to the birthday kid.



Like most singer/songwriter, Alexander had a story for every song. For “Passenger”, she told us the story that she almost died driving on “the hurricane express”, or that “Soul Quake” actually was written as a duet with Janiva Magness, or how quickly her latest single “My Favorite Artist” came together.



With just a 30-min set Cindy Alexander decided to end on a high (or rather unplugged acoustic) note by covering
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ song “American Girl”. Since she’s not attached to any wires, she walked around the restaurant with Handal.



The Tom Petty love would continue with The Bacon Brothers, as one of their lead single “Tom Petty T-Shirt” and the beginning of their encore is a true cover of Petty’s “Don’t Do Me Like That”.



Just watching the two brothers, Michael Bacon and Kevin Bacon, play and sing songs, this was clearly their main focus and passion for the past twenty plus years. Joining the band on stage was Paul Guzzone on bass, Joe “The Destroyer” Mennonna on keyboards, Tim Quick on guitars, and Frank Vilardi on drums. A little inside baseball, but Quick asked to come on tour to replace their original lead guitarist Ira Siegel. Quick, a seasoned Broadway musician, had to learn the Bacon Brothers’ set in about two weeks.



As the group play their ever-changing setlist, they kept adding various instruments in their shows. But it’s for the love of their songs, that the band brought on a cello to play an untitled interlude song, or mandolin for “Driver”, or bongos for “Don’t Lose Me Boy”, or four ukuleles for “Perfect Pitch”, or banging on the Peruvian cajón for a love song devoted to their “Bus”. Speaking from someone who attends a lot of shows, most bands make up the setlist based on what instruments they have with them. Meaning, if a song requires a strange instrument, it might be dropped from their set because they don’t want to bring it on tour. It’s a practical logic, but apparently not for the Bacon Brothers! You have to love them for that.



The brothers were pretty fun and relaxed, and, best of all, were really chatting up the crowd between songs. Some of the banter includes Kevin hearing “Minnesota Nice” for the first time. “Is that really what they say?” he wonders. Then quickly adds, “but as soon as this show falls apart, it’s Minnesota Leaves!”



For “Whole Lotta Shade”, a music video (to sync with the song) was played on the television sets on the walls of the Dakota Jazz Club. Unfortunately, the small-ish sets was hard to see, depending on where you were sitting. It wasn’t a great experience, I wish it was better executed, but given what they had to work with, you can’t blame the band for trying this out.



The Bacon Brothers’ new album is simply called “The Bacon Brothers”. A self-titled album that Kevin admits, “it only took us seven tries to get the title right.”



Remaining tour dates:

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