Review: Neil Young and Promise Of The Real's Sept 26 2018

     

I saw Neil Young and The Promise of the Real last night at The Capitol Theater in Port Chester.  I have been kinda based around here for a bit. I was in fact, about a mile away when I saw posts on facebook of people saying they were at the Neil Young show. How did I miss this? I have been seeing Neil Young in concert since I was 18. I have probably seen him 25 times or so since...missing an intimate Neil theater experience practically on my stoop was just a pain I could not bear.
       I was in front of The Capitol by 8:30, there were people around with their pointer fingers up, the universal hippie signal for, "I need one bro". I did some texts to people I knew as I stood against the side of the theater listening to the start of the show. Someone opened the side door to empty the garbage. I could have most likely made it in right there, "Old school hmm,  that still works for me", yet at 50...if it was to go sour, it could be rather embarrassing, just then a text came through and I was in.
         I intentionally took no pictures or video, I just wanted to be completely present (remember when someone "bootlegging" was considered some kind of a pirate?).
      Ok, I got emotional when they played, Winterlong. It was such a beautiful rendition and this is a song for the deeper Neil fans to get excited about. One of the best things, The Promise Of The Real has done for Neil is they have convinced him to pick more diverse gems from one of the best songwriting catalogs out there. The songs that stuck out-
Motorcycle Mama from the  Comes A Time album, while not one of Neil's most significant songwriting efforts, is an amusing deep cut.(Words) Between The Lines Of Age, was so incredibly executed it made one who has heard this number numerous times before, re-examine how beautiful the intricate and long phrased guitar lines drag you seamlessly through the incredibly organic time changes.
 Tell Me Why, the opening song on, After The Gold Rush, with the full band was souful and played similar to the harmonized vocal version he briefly performed with CSNY, but with electric guitars. He picked up his white Gretsch guitar for,  Cortez The Killer. Neil did his ethereal lead notes that bring us through the intro when it became obvious that his E, B and G strings had gone pretty well out of tune. He paused, let Lukas Nelson cover the guitar work as he turned and very organically tuned his guitar like any mortal guitar player might. He then dug into that Gretsch and channeled that Buffalo Springfield version of himself. It transported the audience to a mystical place if you allowed him to do so; when Neil's vocal entered he was in that realm. He was neither 72 years old or the 20 something that wrote and recorded the number, he was an ageless soul in an ancient realm. Towards the end of the show he played a song from the  American Stars and Bars album, Roll Another Number, another lighter tune that was just the right stony place in the set. Neil has always liked his marijuana and I enjoyed sharing a bit with a few in the surrounding crowd.  Some of the younger fans were surprised to see a stranger extending his stash to someone they had never met, but to others this was just a tradition amongst concert goers steeped in golden rock concert renaissance practice. I hope we have many more years of Neil Young concerts. I find them necessary on so many levels. Long live our royalty of rock,  Neil Young.