Jeff Beck & Tyler Bryant
At Massey Hall in Toronto on Tuesday
For a few minutes near the end of his show, Jeff Beck seemed to have stepped into a time machine and come face to face with his younger self.
The British guitarist was well into an incendiary version of Sly Stone’s I Want to Take You Higher when he brought out Tyler Bryant, a 20-year-old guitarist from Texas who has the same lean profile and speedy fingers as the veteran virtuoso. They may even have the same barber.
Beck likes to celebrate young talent; another of his finds was Tal Wilkenfeld, the Australian bass prodigy who played with him for three years and appears on four tracks from his latest album, Emotion and Commotion.
The word on Bryant seems to be spreading quickly. Massey was mostly full when he began his brief opening set, which featured some amazingly agile playing on acoustic dreadnought and archtop guitars, which he sometimes fuzzed up to sound almost like their electric cousins. The wrenching immediacy of his blues numbers kind of tore the house down, which is doubly impressive when you consider the stature of the headliner.
Beck’s powers on his instrument are still stunning to witness. The detail he could work into the smallest phrase was so rich, I sometimes wanted to pause and rewind so I could hear that bit again. He must be one of the most physically efficient guitarists ever – such an economy of movement to achieve so much. You get the feeling that everything is in easy reach for him at all times – not just the riffs, but the full range of possibilities, in texture, density, rhythm: the whole panoply of musical effect.
Many of his offerings were groove-based numbers built on a tight, bumpy foundation of rugged beats from bassist Rhonda Smith and drummer Narada Michael Walden (who both took cameos singing). Smith’s prickly, percussive style put me in mind of Primus’s Les Claypool, while Walden’s showy athletic drumming filled up his extensive kit and then some.
Jumpy as they could be in their substrata, some of those numbers settled into a relatively static place. Brilliant as his improvisations were, Beck sometimes skimped a bit on narrative interest – the kind of purely musical storytelling that can give tension and drama to an extended tune.
He doesn’t sing, but he has developed an eloquent technique for aria-like, single-line solos – another kind of virtuosity, heavily dependent on his fine mastery of the whammy bar. The best of those long-breathed outings came in his moving and original cover of the Beatles’ A Day in the Life, which gave new dimension to the song and new meaning to the phrase “singing guitar.”
Keyboardist Jason Rebello showed the same kind of nimble-fingered acuity as his colleagues, though seemed hopelessly addicted to breathy synth sounds that should have been left behind with the eighties. This show would have been stronger with some updated keyboard sounds, and with a bit of set-list editing: the Rollin’ and Tumblin’ heard on Tuesday was a pale replica of the terrifying versions Beck recorded on 2001’s outstanding You Had It Coming, and performed at Massey with guitarist/vocalist Jennifer Batten the same year.
But Beck can still thrill, and surprise. Who else would cover Puccini (Nessun dorma) and Lady Gaga (Bad Romance) and do a rip-roaring tribute to Les Paul (How High the Moon)on the same show?
Jeff Beck’s Canadian tour continues with shows at the Thunder Bay Auditorium (Oct. 21), Pantages Playhouse Theatre in Winnipeg (Oct. 22), Calgary’s Jack Singer Concert Hall (Oct. 24), Edmonton’s Winspear Theatre (Oct. 25), and the Centre in Vancouver (Oct. 27).
