At the Sonoma Jazz Festival, John Fogerty performed a bracing set of songs with energy and enthusiasm, making it hard to believe that most of them were more than 40 years old. Drawing mostly from his memorable hits with Creedence Clearwater Revival in the late ‘60s and tossing in a few covers that were even older, Fogerty’s playing and singing seemed to make time stand still. If anything, he has improved with age.
Fogerty delighted a crowd of adoring Boomers under the festival tent with a steady stream of fondly-remembered classics, attired in his trademark working-class flannel shirt and jeans, and looking only a bit older than the CCR frontman who penned some of rock’s most enduring classics. Playing a steady stream of different, shiny guitars that bounced the stage lighting around the tent, he opened with a late CCR gem, “Hey Tonight,” and followed that with a string of hits including “Green River,” “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” “Born on the Bayou” and “Lodi” with a compact version of “Suzie Q,” the 8-minute song which introduced his sound to radio audiences thrown in for good measure. His band featured two other guitarists, two keyboard players and a phenomenal drummer, whose propulsive drive powered the songs, while organ parts fleshed out their simple but solid arrangements.
He was in fine form throughout, soloing with the economy and taste that has always marked his guitar work, yet never settling for a simple reprise of the recorded version. His sturdy, roots-inflected style draws from a deep country tradition, and as if to underscore that point, trotted out a version of “Cotton Fields” that sounded right at home alongside his Creedence classics. A couple of train songs…”Midnight Special” and “Big Train from Memphis”…continued his excursion into his country roots, taking a detour into Louisiana with a convincing cover of Rockin’ Sydney’s “My Toot Toot” featuring zydeco accordion. The juxtaposition of traditional and country songs deftly illustrated the straight line that can be drawn from “Cotton Fields” through country music to “Lookin’ Out My Back Door.”
Mixing in a few songs from his post-Creedence solo work (such as a heartfelt “Don’t You Wish It Was True”) and more well-chosen covers (Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” brought the crowd to its feet and displayed Fogerty’s still-supple voice, and he led the band through a spirited “Good Golly Miss Molly”) Fogerty stuck pretty close to the country-tinged CCR template, decorating the songs with expert guitar licks that always seemed to stop short of self-indulgence. On the more country-flavored songs, his tone and skill suggested that if his solo career hadn’t worked out, he could have made a good living in Nashville. At only one point in the show did he venture outside his trademark rock and roots sound, and that was for a brief guitar solo introduction to “Keep On Chooglin’” where his impressive, fretboard-tapping, jazzy interlude demonstrated that he had the chops to do almost anything he wanted to. But he knew what the crowd had come for, and was happy to deliver it.
As the show built towards its climax, Fogerty staked out his solo turf with “Centerfield,” which featured a guitar shaped like a fat baseball bat, and “Old Man Down the Road” before a blistering reading of his protest anthem “Fortunate Son” which closed the set. He quickly returned for an encore (there is no way he would have left without performing “Proud Mary”) and kicked off “Bad Moon Rising” which brought the entire crowd to its feet before the inevitable finale that sent home everyone with a warm, satisfied glow. Although most of the songs were decades old, and the audience’s nostalgia for them undeniable, their timeless quality and the immediacy of Fogerty’s performance made the songs sound as though they could have been recorded last week.
Openers the Tedeschi/Trucks band turned in a funky set of blues-oriented songs with a mighty 11-piece band that laid down powerful grooves for Trucks’ finely-etched slide guitar work and Susan Tedeschi’s soulful vocals, which summoned equal parts Janis Joplin and Bonnie Raitt. The band leaders’ intuitive interplay underscored their status as a happily married couple, and they expertly guided the band through a well-received set.
