Town Park, Telluride CO, 12 p.m. June 23 – They started hauling a semi-trailer’s worth of speaker stacks and dozens of collector guitars onstage 12 hours before John Fogerty bounded onstage June 23 at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. As it turned out, they needed every tube-driven amplifier and Hammond B-3 organ as Fogerty pounded his way through nearly every one of his Creedance Clearwater Revival and solo hits from “Born on a Bayou” to a groundshaking “Proud Mary. ”
Over 30 years at this festival I’ve heard many bands rock out but never as hard and relentlessly as John Fogerty did last night. At 67 he was running around the stage for two hours with nary a breather between three minute tunes. Unlike other elder rock statesmen, he didn’t have to lower the key to still sing “Centerfield” or “Green River.” His crack band was propelled by Kenny Aronoff, one of rock’s premier drummers. Fogerty sounded inspired and played various cool guitars like a kid again. I think the fact that he didn’t play any of these hits for many decades gives him a unique freshness and urgency.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s set followed directly after another impeccable, hard-driving set by a member of bluegrass music’s royalty, the silver-haired Del McCoury, and a remarkable jazz interlude with Marcus Roberts and Bela Fleck. After Fogerty Colorado’s seminal jam-grass band Leftover Salmon picked into the niight.
Most of the 39th Telluride Bluegrass Festival is being streamed live at koto.org. Some bands choose noit to be streamed. Today on the Fred Shellman Memorial Stage:
* 12:45 p.m. The Devil Makes Three
* 2:30 p.m. Jerry Douglas
* 4:15 p.m.: Yonder Mountain String Band
* 6:15 p.m. k.d. lang
8 p.m. Sam Bush
10:30 p.m. Bruce Hornsby