It is always a treat to hear Eric Braun play. He returned to Casino Lethbridge for a weekend engagement, Jan. 28 and 29.
I caught his first set on Jan 28.
I arrived in the middle of a bluesy cover of “Working Man‘s Blues, which he and his tight band of drummer Jon Bateman, keyboardist Nate Lockley and bassist Mike Davidson.
They were just finishing as I settled in.
Then they turned around and turned Harry Styles’s pop hit Watermelon Sugar,” into a sweet, bluesy jam.
After that, the rest of the set was all original laid back mid-tempo blues music.
Braun played plenty of beautiful guitar solos, and there were a lot of keyboard solos from Nate Lockley.
Braun played an older original “ Back To California.”
“It’s hard to believe I’ve got a song I wrote five years ago,” Braun noted.
Lockley covered with a keyboard vamp while Braun switched from his Telecaster for a Les Paul for a slide guitar infused cover of JJ Cale’s “After Midnight,” which he followed up with a beautiful cover of the Bros. Landreth “It Goes on and on.”
He prefaced it with I’m going to try to do this justice,” and did so and then some with that sweet slide sound.
They wound up their first set with braun changing guitars again, playing a few bars of Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire” and ended with an upbeat rocker “ Can’t Get You off My Mind.”
— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor
