Harry

May 8, 2004 | South Bend, IN

Venue: Morris Performing Arts Center
Distance Traveled: 617 miles
Performance Type: Big Band
Attended With: Carolyn DeCora (my mom)
Seats: Row C, Seats 1,2
Setlist: 

If I Were a Bell
Way Down Yonder in New Orleans (Derrick Gardner solo)
I Have Dreamed (Mark Mullins solo)
We Are In Love (John Allred solo)
Here's That Rainy Day (Harry - piano/vocal)
Lucious w/ Jesus on the Mainline (Lucien)
There's Always One More Time
That's a Plenty (Lucien & Leroy)
Its Good To Be Home (Harry & Lucien)
Take Her to the Mardi Gras
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
My Blue Heaven
Only You (Jimmy Greene solo)
For Once In My Life
True Love
Back Home in Indiana (solo piano)
Come By Me
Mardi Gras encore

Photos

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Review

My mom and I got into South Bend around 3:30pm and went to check into the hotel. There were these familiar looking buses parked out front when we pulled up. I knew the tour tended to stay at Marriott hotels, but it was still a fun surprise to see them anyway. Barb, Lew, and Gabi had arrived just a bit before we did and I saw them on the way to the pool. Lew and Gabi stayed to swim and Barb joined my mom and I to go pick up our tickets. Before we left the hotel, I saw Mark in the coffee shop and chatted for a minute before he had to go get on the bus. Also saw Jerry and Leroy checking out. We headed over to the venue to pick up our tickets. It was such a great location, the hotel was a block from the venue. Perfect. Overall, South Bend was a really nice town. I'd never been there before, but it is now definitely on my tour roster for the future. Our tickets were 3rd row and Barb's were 2nd row, but we were practially right next to each other, so it worked out great. We came back to the hotel and changed and then we all went out for dinner. It was a really enjoyable pre-show meal outside by the riverwalk area. Weather was perfect, food was delicious and it was also prom in town that night so we got to see lots of girls in their dresses and one girl get her shoe stuck in the boardwalk and make a little scene. Heh. After dinner we headed over to the venue and waited for the doors to open. Grabbed a few pictures too.

Once they let us in, we visited Paul at the merchandise booth and procured a variety of items. I got a tank top this time around. The merchandise is really fun this tour and I pretty much want one of everything. Finally we go to go find our seats. For the second time I managed to score a seat with dancing space. It was third row, but there were no chairs in front of me and no chair to my left. I anyone who might have had to actually sit next to me should appreciate that they actually didn't. Erica, Jackie, Andrea, and Betsy showed up a little before show time. They reported being a bit lost at some point, but they made it. They were in the front row on our same side of the stage. While you can't see Harry's hands when he plays the piano sitting on the right side, in my experience, he tends to spend more time in the middle and right side of the stage anyway when he's not playing, so it balances out just right.

The lights went down, applause starts up, the curtain parts and out steps Doug Wamble. The applause quickly dies out, he sits down and says, "Wow, 5 seconds. That's the longest the applause has ever gone on once I step out." I like his humor. He proceeds to play his three song set of Blue Skies, The Sweet Magnolia Tree, and then he did a blues piece that I didn't catch the title of. When he was finished he plugged his CD at the merchandise table and encouraged us to "please take your disappointment home with you." Comedy. Stagehands quickly whisked away all his assorted bits, Art kicked off If I Were A Bell, the curtains opened and we were off! Ned was once again up front by Art. And soon enough, out came Harry. He was in jeans again, but this time was sporting a black henley shirt, pretty much all the buttons undone. I like the casual look, it lends itself to the feel of this tour. Harry was instantly into the show, even giving a few little pelvic thrusts to some of Ned's solo. Ha!

Opening with a set similar to Kansas City, Way Down Yonder in New Orleans was next up followed by I Have Dreamed which featured Mark on a trombone solo. When the song was over, Harry was pointing out the soloists and trying to get a spotlight on Mark. He was just standing there in the dark for a bit, then the light hit him full force, he looked so thrilled. Heh. Come on Mark, you're a rock star, you love the spotlight. Continuing with trombone features, after a solo piano intro by Harry, John Allred got the spotlight with his solo on We Are in Love. Harry then started a piano solo and proceed to sing Here's That Rainy Day by himself, no band backing. I may have heard this one other time several shows again, but regardless, it was really good.

Ok, got some good songs out of the way, time for fun! Harry brought out Lucien and they performed Lucious! It sounds like a new big band arrangement and it sounds really fabulous. Such great energy from Lucien, you gotta just love him. Gabi really likes Lucien and she was just loving his antics on stage. The whole crowd was eating him up with a spoon. Making the whole thing even more funny was the fact that Lucien had this little piece of paper stuck to his butt through most of the song. He's just shaking his booty all over and there's this little scrap stuck to him. Ridiculous! Lucious wound down to Harry playing the piano and he and Lucien just singing Jesus on the Mainline to each other. They got to the line of "call him up, tell him what you want" and just vamped on that line over and over, getting quieter and quieter with each go round until they weren't singing at all, they were just mouthing the words to each other. It was hysterical and the crowd was laughing at their crazy facial expressions to each other. Harry finally said "you know what I want, give me a fiil, Art." Art obliged and then the song ended. Neal managed to point out the piece of paper to Lucien and he got it off, but not without Lucien being silly on stage. Such fun stage presence.

Harry then introduced Leroy who arrived out front with his flugelhorn and performed There's Always One More Time. I will never ever tire of hearing that song. The tour just won't be the same without Leroy the rest of the summer. Always keeping the guys on their toes, Harry then called for That's A Plenty, so Leroy had to dash off and get his trumpet. I sound like a broken record, but I love this song too! Its so high energy and exciting. I always end up conducting a bit in my seat. Next came It's Good to Be Home. Wow! I heard the debut of this song in Kansas City four days before and I was curious to hear how far it would come performance-wise in that time frame. Harry never disappoints, he now has Lucien singing the song with him and doing solos. It works so well. Harry even changed the line from "got my Satchmo too" to "got my Barbarin too." I was just amazed with how different and completely together this song was. I was equally impressed with Take Her to the Mardi Gras that followed. Harry even got all the words right! The band and the arrangement are both phenomenal with this tune. Of note: there was no TSN lament, they just did the songs and Harry said they were about NOLA. I liked that.

Enough music already! Cue Random Harry! He got up from the piano and proceeded to tell us that he was awake and ready to go because he'd slept until 2pm that day. Actually, he continued, he had gotten up at 10ish and gone down for some breakfast. Explained how he tries to eat well six days of the week with Sunday being his cheat day. It was Saturday, so he was planning to be good, ordered some egg whites and some wheat toast. However, while he was standing waiting for his eggs, the little boxes of Frosted Flakes caught his eye and he couldn't resist. So he gave in and had some, but since the boxes are small, he didn't just have one box, he had four or five! Ate his eggs and toast too. He was then going to go hit the gym, but decided once you've started cheating, you can't just go back to being good by lunch time. So instead of going to the gym, he just went back to bed and declared it a "cheat weekend." WOOHOO! Sugar High Harry on a Saturday, bonus!! But he was starting to come down off the sugar high and he asked the audience if there was a bar in the back (there was) because he'd give $20 for an ice cold Coke. At some point, someone brought him a Coke. He then saw someone on the left side of the stage in the second row behind the pit seating with binoculars. It was all over at that point. He was off the stage and down in front of the guy asking to see the binoculars. But the guy won't give them up, I couldn't really see him but Harry said he just kept shaking his hand. Funny. A girl comes down and give Harry a bag of candy. We're good to go now! Binoculars guy finally gives them up and Harry is looking at them and saying how nice they are and then staring back at the guy through them saying, "wow, they're extra-wide" and the normal "why the heck do you have binoculars this close" spiel. I always want to get some opera glasses and say I'm just trying to see the band better.

Harry goes to get back up on the stage, but first he stops to strike up conversation with the security guy sitting by that side of the stage. His name is Bill and Harry says he looks like a tough guy and wants to know if he's an athlete. Bill says he's a bowler. This makes Harry bring up the age old question, "what is a game and what is a sport?" Then he says he has a bowling story. Yea, I love Harry stories! But before he could get started, some lady stood up right next to Harry said it was her birthday and then asked for a kiss. Sit down lady. Harry obliged her and then got back to his story. This took place about a year ago when he was taking his six year old daughter to teach her to bowl. [He must be talking about Georgia.] He's got a light ball, a kid's ball, like six pounds or something. He said he went to throw the ball and he heard this loud pop and then had this terrible pain in his arm. [This is how he got the injury he was recovering from at MG in 2003!] He goes to the doctor and he's torn the tendon in his bicep. The doctor asks him, "we don't know what you need your hands for, but do you need to be able to do this?" (Harry turns rotates his wrist and turns his hand over to demonstrate.) Harry was all, "um, yes. I'm a piano player." Apparently he was embarassed by how he'd hurt himself and hadn't ever really told any of the medical people how it actually happened. But he confessed all when he was in a drug-induced haze from the morphine drip. So now we know how he hurt himself, one more mystery solved. After this, he finally got back up on stage.

The whole time he's been eating candy out of the bag at that the girl brought him. Now he comes back over to the center of the stage and sees this teenaged girl and starts talking to her with his "you don't even know who I am, do you?" bit. Turns out she was 20 actually and Harry was asking her what music she liked. Harry was guessing Norah Jones or Britney. He asked guy sitting there who he liked and he said Wheezer and Harry said, "God Bless You." At this point, Harry declares that the "show is going in a whole different direction." The band should've been listening. Then Harry saw Gabi and came over to talk to her and say how pretty she looked in her red dress. Gabi was so attentive to Harry, she definitely knows who he is. There was another little girl sitting over to the right of Gabi in the row in front of us and Harry saw her and started talking to her. You can tell he misses his daughters when he's on the road, its so sweet. He asked this other girl if she knew who he was, she just stared at him. So he said, "I'm Hillary Duff!" HA! Says he knows all that music; Hillary, Britney, Avril LaVienge because he's got young girls too. Harry then decides he wants to do something for the two girls in the audience, let's do Supercali!

I have never seen the band scramble so much before. It was hysterial. They had no idea he was going to do this. They had to get the sousaphone out of the case and get it miked up for John. Man, stagehands scrambling all over the place, guys coming down front. Jerry Weldon was getting off his chair to come down to the front and Harry sees him and starts just screaming at him "Where do you think you're going?? Do you think you're going to get a solo??" Oh Sugar High shows, how I love thee. They finally get the group together and Harry declares he's sure he won't remember the words. [He actually did remember them all, I was shocked.] It was great fun. John Allred, Craig, Leroy, Mark Braud, Jerry, and Lucien (I think) were all down front and soloing and Neal was all dancing around on the side with his tambourine, trying to be as hip as possible while doing it. That ends and the guys all disperse back to their seats. Some people behind me start yelling out, "Harry, we love 'Memphis Belle!'" The hell? Yeah, lets reference a thirteen year old movie and just yell it out. Harry never really understood them but heard enough people yelling to remark, "What is this? cabaret hour?" He then tried to shift back into a slightly more serious mood by thanking the audience for coming out and supporting them. But that just didn't last as Harry went back to his piano and starting beatboxing and sang a few lines from Baby's Got Back! He sat down at the piano and said he'd timed it [the sugar] wrong and now he was going to do ballads. A good deal of the audience groaned. HA! He stood back up and started drinking some water from his water bottle but then decided he didn't need that anymore and threw it over his shoulder and off stage! Then he continued to drink the glass of Coke. Sits back down again and acts like he's going to get back to business. Well kind of, declares he's doing the "Power Ballads of Black Sabbath" and proceeds to start playing Ironman on the piano! Then he switches to Back in Black for a moment. Now he's satisfied for two reasons. 1) He's still working on the history of Freebird and 2) He's pretty sure most of the audience came to the wrong show. Continues to dig candy out of the bag and is excited to find a malted milk ball. Talks about how much he loves black jellybeans. Wants to know who likes those too. People applaud. Then he asks who doesn't like black jellybeans. Almost the entire band raises their hands and the audience roars. So funny! He told us to send them all to him then, he'd take our black jellybeans .

Since we are in Indiana, Harry again choses to recognize Ted Jonah and his production company at the show. Harry says he can see Jonah off stage from where he is sitting and that he looks like satan since its all dark and he's got underlighting on him. Ever affected by the sugar, Harry then starts playing all this Wagneresque music and yelling out many names for satan while trying to get Ted to come out on stage. He then switches to Roll Out the Barrell and Ted finally came out and took his bow.

Back to the music, really. I'm serious. Time for two token songs from Only You: My Blue Heaven and For Once in My Life. They remain good songs, even better sans strings. Harry wanted to keep going so he decided to do a simple Cole Porter song and I was thrilled since it turned out to be True Love from "High Society." Now I've gotten to hear both of the "High Society" songs he's arranged. Love it. Then we were treated to a full on piano solo by Harry on Back Home Again in Indiana. [Thanks to Indiana native, Barb, for filling me in because I would not have known it.] The solo was phenomenal, a lot more involved and lively than anything I'd heard in Kansas City. But that's why I love Harry, no two shows are ever the same. Then it was time for Come By Me. I never want the show to end, but man, I love that song! Big Dave Schumacher solo and *bam* it was over.

Encore was MG as per usual. I sat down for about 30 seconds at the beginning then Erica and I got up and started grooving. Gabi came over and danced with me in my little aisle. Jackie, Andrea, Betsy and a few other random people around us got up too, but that was about it. Lame people. We got the booty shake RIGHT in front us. The booty shake just isn't going to be the same without Leroy. He's really got the best shake of the three of them. Of course the crowd ate it up with a spoon. During Jerry's solo, Lucien and Harry were dancing with each other, locking their legs together and hopping around each other. Crazy fun! And then it was over and the curtain fell.

It was an absolutely perfect night for a meet and greet. Lovely clear skies and nice and comfortable temperatures. Chatted with at least half the band and saw Harry. He was so sweet to Gabi, I love getting to see that. I blabbered on about the TSN arrangments. I need to get new material. And that was it. We headed back to the hotel and got a little bit of sleep.

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