“Everyone really needs some love right now.”
Those were the words of Daryl Hall as he addressed a relatively slight audience of 3,217 at the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand. He knew that he had arrived in a state that’s in a lot of pain after Wednesday’s shooting at a Minneapolis church. So he and his six-piece backing band set out to deliver a set full of sweetness, their bouncy pop built on foundations of funky grooves and the kind of catchy choruses ideal for communal sing-alongs.
Add an inspiring opening set from the Rascals — a vintage rhythm-and-blues-based band whose heyday preceded that of Hall and his former partner, John Oates, by about 15 years — and you have an uplifting show, an evening of sonic salve that deserved a considerably more substantial audience.
Hall and his band stepped in on short notice when the Steve Miller Band canceled its Grandstand show, but it was the audience’s good fortune that the original warmup act, the Rascals, stayed on the bill.
The lone original Rascal was the band’s principal singer and co-songwriter, keyboardist Felix Cavaliere. It was he who set the tone for the evening by addressing the local population’s sorrow before his band played a note, offering consolation in words and in a touching choice for an opening song, “A Ray of Hope,” which Cavaliere and co-Rascal Eddie Brigati wrote to encourage equality advocates disheartened by the killing of Martin Luther King Jr.
At age 82, Cavaliere still has his distinctive rough-edged tenor, which may not still hit all the notes, but the eight-piece band (including three horns) did remarkable justice to such soulful fare as “Groovin’,” “People Got to Be Free” and an exhilarating finale of “Good Lovin’.”
And the 78-year-old Hall proved a fine fit to follow them to the stage, as he was a product of the Philadelphia R&B scene. Sure, his tenor voice can’t soar as high and clearly as it once did, but Hall worked around it by allowing his bandmates to sing the choruses of familiar Hall and Oates tunes while he wound improvisations around them, a tactic from the gospel tradition.
There was a string of Hall and Oates chart toppers from the early ‘80s — “Maneater,” “Kiss on My List,” “Private Eyes,” “Rich Girl” and an extended pre-encore jam on “I Can’t Go for That” — but Hall’s passion really emerged on a pair of songs from his solo albums, “Walking in Between Raindrops” and an homage to the music of his youth, “I’m in a Philly Mood,” which he introduced by favorably comparing Philadelphia and Minneapolis as cities that have each produced a unique R&B sound.
Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.
