Marcus King is becoming a big boy. It is the first time that he is not playing in the smaller venues. From Metropool in 2020 and Doornroosje 2022 and via the larger 013, he is now playing in one of the larger Amsterdam venues for the first time.
Afas Live was not sold out but certainly well filled. The audience was surprisingly young. Maybe because all the old geezers were with Deep Purple in the Ziggodome. Maybe a next step for Marcus?
If I am to believe all the reviews of Deep Purple, the audience should have chosen Marcus King. It was a fantastic evening despite the fact that I was a bit disappointed in his new music after his last album “Mood swing”. It was a lot of soul and the album was a bit too much. Not an album to listen to again, unlike his “Young blood” from 2022.
However, everything is different live, 7 songs from the album were played but different, with much more passion or even acoustic. Right from the start with “It’s Too Late” we were sucked into the evening. The quiet “Hero” and “Beautiful Stranger” were made into wonderful songs by the smooth Hammond of Mike Runyon and the slide of 2nd guitarist Drew Smithers, soul influences for sure, but it is clearly noticeable where the roots of the band are, the Southern style with Allman brothers influences.
The versatility of the band is best visible in songs like the dedicated to the crew “Workin’ Man Blues” and “Save me”. The first is just country while the second had some funky elements.
After the band had left the stage, Markus King picked up his acoustic guitar and here the power of live music came to the fore.
“Bipolar love” is just a nobody’s valley on the album but gets so much power in this acoustic version. With the also acoustically played “Mood swings” the rhythm clapping audience was a wonderful addition and showed how much the audience was enjoying themselves.
At the end of the regular set Marcus King had another surprise in store for the audience, “In memory of Elizabeth Reed” by the aforementioned Allman Brothers band. This song had not yet been played during the European tour and I prefer it to the much played “Ramblin mann”.
But the Almann fans (and there were many of them judging by the applause) were spoiled because this was also played in the encore together with other crowd favorites like “Wildflowers & Wine” and “Delilah”. With a particularly good feeling we went back to the car knowing that the blues is not dead with artists like Marcus King, Gary Clark JR, Larkin’ Poe and the Teskey brothers who know how to attract a younger audience and all play different styles but clearly keep links to the blues.
