• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About
  • Donate

The Arts Fuse

Boston's Online Arts Magazine: Dance, Film, Literature, Music, Theater, and more

  • Podcasts
  • Coming Attractions
  • Reviews
  • Interviews
  • Commentary
  • The Arts
    • Performing Arts
      • Dance
      • Music
      • Theater
    • Other
      • Books
      • Film
      • Food
      • Television
      • Visual Arts
You are here: Home / Music / Popular Music / Concert Review: Sonny Landreth and Cindy Cashdollar at Regattabar — In The Blues Comfort Zone

Concert Review: Sonny Landreth and Cindy Cashdollar at Regattabar — In The Blues Comfort Zone

January 29, 2014 Leave a Comment

Sonny Landreth tours with an electric rhythm section, but Tuesday night found him in a quieter duo with Austin, TX steel guitarist and former Asleep at the Wheel member, the wonderfully-named Cindy Cashdollar.

Sonny Landreth and Cindy Cashdollar performing together in 2007. Photo: Darrell Hoemann/The News-Gazette
Sonny Landreth and Cindy Cashdollar performing together in 2007. Photo: Darrell Hoemann/The News-Gazette

By Brett Milano

Sonny Landreth is a guitar hero for people who hates guitar heroics. In other words, he’s an expressive player rather than a shredder; his technical chops are almost beside the point — If you saw him at the Rhythm & Roots Festival a couple weeks after Hurricane Katrina, you know how sad a slide guitar can sound. He thinks lyrically even when he plays instrumentals, so it makes sense that his first mainstream exposure came with John Hiatt, a songwriter who’s all about deep meanings (Lately he’s also been seen with a rowdier troubadour, Jimmy Buffett). And Landreth’s elegant licks always come with a sense of place: His home of South Louisiana, referenced both in his lyrics and his distinctly swampy tone.

He usually tours with an electric rhythm section, but Tuesday night (at Boston’s Regattabar) found Landreth in a quieter duo with Austin, TX steel guitarist and former Asleep at the Wheel member, the wonderfully-named Cindy Cashdollar. But instead of fusing Landreth’s swamp rock with Cashdollar’s Western swing, they wound up sticking mainly with one thing they have in common: The blues. Without a rhythm section, there wasn’t much room for them to explore in tandem; instead, they took turns holding down the rhythm while the other soloed. A bassist and drummer might have pushed them to less familiar territory, but these players’ comfort zone isn’t a bad place to hang out.

Landreth opened the night solo, and guitar geeks had a chance to study his tricks: He uses a pick only on his thumb, and tends to hammer hard with the thumb-pick on the aggressive bits (a technique also used quite a bit by Jeff Beck). He also plays with his entire picking hand, stroking his palm over the strings while upping the distortion to produce a crying tone. Those tricks are easy enough to copy, but not everyone can make them sound as celebratory as Landreth did on “South of I-10,” his homage to the Lafayette dancehalls. His stage patter, as usual, was a model of understatement: After opening the night with an instrumental whose languid tone again brought the South to mind, he intoned, “Well, there’s the first one.”

With Cashdollar in tow, the set turned to blues standards by Robert Johnson (“Walking Blues”) and Skip James (“Cherry Ball Blues”). The two guitarists best meshed on “Key to the Highway,” a tune originally by Big Bill Broonzy but since identified with Eric Clapton and Duane Allman’s two-guitar showcase on the Layla album (“Pretty much all my heroes have done this one,” Landreth offered). Cashdollar took the first solo on dobro, giving it a carefree feel. Landreth then took the music to a darker place, hammering some ominous low notes before wailing in the high registers. More exchanges followed, with the upbeat mood gradually winning out, just in time for the singer to get back on the highway.

No denying that South-evoking music sounds especially sweet on a brittle night in Boston. But as Cashdollar reminded the near-full crowd, “It’s pretty cold tonight where we come from too.”


Brett Milano has been covering music in Boston for decades, and is the author of Vinyl Junkies: Adventures in Record Collecting (St. Martins, 2001) and The Sound of Our Town: A History of Boston Rock & Roll (Commonwealth Editions, 2007). He recently returned from New Orleans where he was editor of the music and culture magazine OffBeat.

Share
Tweet
Pin
Share

By: Brett Milano Filed Under: Featured, Music, Popular Music, Review Tagged: blues, Brett Milano, Cindy Cashdollar, guitar, Regattabar, Sonny Landreth

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Search

Popular Posts

  • Television Review: “Surviving Death” — Probing Death and the Great Beyond Surviving Death's balance between personal experiences... posted on January 11, 2021
  • Jazz Album Review: “El Arte del Bolero” — Passionate Homage to the Era of the Bolero So Miguel Zenón, who on saxophone has the facility of a... posted on January 5, 2021
  • Arts Feature: Best Movies (With Some Disappointments) of 2020 Our demanding critics choose the best films (along with... posted on December 21, 2020
  • Arts Feature: Best Classical Recordings of 2020 The pandemic may have largely shut down live musical pe... posted on December 22, 2020
  • Film/Music Review: The Best Music Documentaries of 2020 — With Some Disppointments Some of the best music documentaries of 2020 - and some... posted on December 29, 2020

Social

Follow us:

Follow the Conversation

  • beverly schwartz January 17, 2021 at 3:23 pm on Book Review: A.B. Yehoshua’s “The Tunnel” — A Serious Romp about an Aging BrainDid not understand the end of "The Tunnel" By A.B. Yeshoshua
  • Tom Augaitis January 15, 2021 at 10:23 pm on Blues Album Review: John Hurlbut and Jorma Kaukonen’s “The River Flows”What a great recording from two masterful artists. Hoping for a sequel.
  • Anthony January 15, 2021 at 7:08 pm on Classical CD Reviews: A Banquet of Beethoven from Daniel Lozakovich, Midori, and Gidon Kremer & FriendsI went ahead and listened to both but I could not finish listening to Midori's, had to stop. Lozakovich's was...
  • Bill Marx, Editor of The Arts Fuse January 15, 2021 at 11:44 am on Film Review: “Pieces of a Woman” — “They give birth astride of a grave…”The quotation in the review's headline is part of a line in Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot: "They give...
  • erica abeel January 14, 2021 at 3:31 pm on Film Review: “Let Them All Talk” — Angst of Many FlavorsI'm most grateful to be read by such responsive readers as you guys!

Footer

  • About Us
  • Advertising/Underwriting
  • Syndication
  • Media Resources
  • Editors and Contributors

We Are

Boston’s online arts magazine since 2007. Powered by 70+ experts and writers.

Follow Us

Monthly Archives

Categories

"Use the point of your pen, not the feather." -- Jonathan Swift

Copyright © 2021 · The Arts Fuse - All Rights Reserved · Website by Stephanie Franz