Lukas Nelson fulfills his promise

With a quiet intensity and a nod to the sparse crowd gathered before the smallest stage at OttawaBluesfest, Lukas Nelson didn’t waste any time waiting for more people to show up – he simply blew the hats off those people who had gathered in the sunshine to watch the son of a legend perform some very un-Willy-Nelson-like material.

Where Willie’s melancholy warble was the focus of his music, Lukas lets his guitar do the heavy lifting, and heavy it is. Hard driving, frantic and loud, Nelson sounds like more like the latest incarnation of southern rock, a Lynyrd Skynyrd/Allman Brothers/Black Crowes thunderclap, as opposed to the lilting surf-rock he was raised around in Hawaii and California.

With the hot July sun shining right in his eyes and the sweat beading on his forehead, Lukas didn’t sugarcoat anything. However, he did manage to showcase some diversity in his short set, and gave his bandmates some room to breathe as well, especially Promise of the Real’s very talented bassist, Corey McCormick. His anchor baselines often took centre stage as Nelson went on wild, raucus jaunts on stage and along the neck of his guitar, jumping off amps and risers and losing more buttons on his shirt as the show went on.

Coming out rocking with a long, technical jam off the new album, Wasted, Don’t Take Me Back got the small crowd warmed up before Nelson busted out a couple older tunes off the band’s self-titled 2010 debut, POTR. Four Letter Word and Aint No Answer cranked it up a notch before Nelson, learning his way as a stage musician, turned down the intensity and showcased his soft-spoken, folkier side. A calm and collected take on No Place to Fly, which he recorded with his dad, led into a heartfelt Fathers and Mothers that is clearly a very important and meaningful song to Lukas.

Closing out this set’s bridge, so to speak, he electrified the crowd with a stirring rendition of Amazing Grace a la Jimmy Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock. As if teasing Pink Floyd’s Time in an instrumental wasn’t enough, Lukas and POTR busted into the Stones’ instantly recognizable Sympathy for the Devil and closed the show on that point, leaving me hanging and hoping for a rendition of Wasted that was not to come. In another ode to Jimmy, he played a significant guitar solo with his teeth and had the crowd roaring with appreciation for his considerable skills and showmanship.

Without an encore due to time restrictions, Lukas and his band mates did come back on stage to tear down their gear and chat briefly with the few die-hards who remained front and centre. Lukas himself jumped down into the gap between the stage and spoke with four or five of us, handing out his guitar picks and signing a setlist for me. One guy told him he looked just like his dad but with shorter hair, to which he replied, “I know man, it used to be longer.” I was able to thank Lukas for coming to Ottawa, which is a rare tour stop for most in the jam-band scene, and shake his hand, and it’s those experiences that always stand out years later.

I would expect nothing less than for Willie’s son to be a man-of-the-people, and I’m definitely looking forward to his upcoming Canadian tour opening for John Fogerty. See you in September, Lukas!