Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks / Bowery Ballroom / Sept. 7, 2000
Since his last studio album, 1976’s It Happened One Bite, singer-songwriter-guitarist/ quick-witted satirist Dan Hicks has been writing music for HBO and hocking commercials for Levi’s Jeans and Mc Donalds. Recently, he revamped his band, the Hot Licks, recorded ‘00s generous 15-song comeback, Beatin’ The Heat, and began touring. Playing his first New York City gig in 20 years, Hicks captivated a Bowery Ballroom audience filled with dyed-in-the-wool former hippies (including jug band fixture Jim Kweskin and WFMU d.j. Rita Houston) and party-spirited thirtysomethings.
A laid-back beatnik with a pure ‘n easy pre-rock folk-Jazz obsession, the soft-toned, flinty voiced Hicks performed for nearly two hours, dousing his set with intermittent quips and sarcastic snips. His songs, as always, had a relaxed, unhurried vibe that weighed ever gentle on the mind. Many were spiced with a breezy samba feel and a lounge-y ‘40s cocktail bar effervescence, especially the delicate “End Of A Love Affair.”
Credit guitarist Tom Mitchell, violinist Brian Godcheaux, string bassist Ozzie Andrews, plus politely soulful backup singers Debbie and Susan for giving Hicks solid support. During the Gypsy Jazz excursion of Cozy Cole’s “Topsy,” each musician performed a terse solo showcasing virtuosity. Then, wry mandolin-laced “Where’s the Money,” feel good summer stroll “Strike It While It’s Hot” (done as a duet with Bette Midler on the new LP), and voodoo love song “I Scare Myself” (featuring Rickie Lee Jones’ sultry voice on the new LP) located a contagiously low key serenity somewhere between J.J. Cale, Michael Hurley, and It’s A Beautiful Day.
Hicks bragged about getting “Motley shitfaced” before settling into the cracked bourgeois white-Blues, “Got My Paycheck Today,” then delivered “Black-Headed Buzzard” in a style that seemed half freight train Blues, half Appalachian Mountain folk. For an encore, he swiped a Western Swing ditty from Texas legend Bob Wills; smiled through the ironic “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away”; and eased into Beatin’ The Heat’s protagonistic serenade “I Don’t Want Love” (featuring former Stray Cat guitarist Brian Setzer on the studio version) and the sweetly bluesy confection “My Cello.”
Since leaving seminal pre-psychedelic ‘60s San Francisco band the Charlatans, Hicks very capably has spliced vintage American music genres with quirky originality and cornball absurdity. Now, nearly three decades since his high water mark, ‘73s Last Train To Hicksville, this Little Rock, Arkansas-born relic has still got the naive charm, deliberate smirk, and youthful anxiety of artists one-third his age.