But the setting was quite amazing, Rocco DeLuca holding his Dobro guitar resonating in the darkness, with a light projector right in his face, making him looking like a haunting ghostly figure. The ambiance was very successfully creating a sort of danger or insecurity, perfectly fitting the sound produced by his voice and echoing guitar.
The sound was slowly building itself, menacing and dark, and the voice was strong but agonizing, lamenting like a cry for help in a desperate situation. You could touch the mud and feel the heat of a hot night in a Mississippi bayou, although you were not so sure of what was happening.
With a very expressive face, making painful expressions, Rocco DeLuca gave a gut wrenching performance of some of his songs like ‘I trust you to kill me’ with the right amount of blues and soul. Most of the ambiance came from his reverberating resonator guitar, which was tearing the space and producing the drama. His powerful voice has being compared to Jeff Buckley many times and I can hear it, especially in the falsetto range, although I have never seen Buckley live.
He played alone the first part of his set and then was joined on stage by C.C. White, who brought a blues-gospel feeling to the experience, as her effortless vocals was marrying perfectly the anguish and calming a bit the melancholy of the sound.
He ended up with the first song he recorded with Daniel Lanois ‘Nightingale’, from his 2009 ‘Mercy’ album. With lyrics like ‘I can’t remember the last time you kissed me’ the song turned to be much more nostalgic and more on the sentimental side than the dirty blues of the opening tunes.
He did not said much during the set, just thanking Daniel Lanois to have invited him to play. I wonder why, with so many big names taking care of his career (his label Ironworks was created by actor Kiefer Sutherland), Rocco DeLuca writes so many depressing songs.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFFXfmQ2Iu8&w=500&h=390]