Another week and another sold out show for the First Niagara Presents Tuesday in the Park at Artpark Concert Series. This week it was the Steve Miller Band who played in front of a capacity crowd. The band’s career spans 6 decades and 17 studio albums. You cannot listen to a classic rock station for long without hearing one of the band’s rock radio staples.
Miller took the stage at 8 pm waving to the crowd and mentioned how spread out the audience was. Far and wide they were treated to a bevy of hits and some deep cuts thrown in as well. I must admit, even though I’m not a big fan of his live shows, this time around he seemed to put on a different style of show. It was just a 5 piece band including Miller. No frills and just good ole classic rock the way it was meant to be played.
Miller headlined the recent birthday celebration of what would have been Les Paul’s 100th birthday in NYC on June 9th. He dedicated the song “Living in the USA to both Les Paul and to BB King who recently passed away as well. Miller played harmonica on “Lovin’ Cup” and talked about San Francisco (where the band hails from) and how he was looking forward to the original Santana band reunion in 2016.
Miller strayed from his set a bit when he played a few covers, “One Mint Julep” and “Blues with a Feeling.” The latter led to a short acoustic set where Miller went solo giving the audience a stripped down version of a few songs including “Jet Airliner.” While he played a bit of it he remarked, “I can’t do that to ya” then went on to play “Wild Mountain Honey.” He played the full version later in the set. Miller came out with a joker mask at the beginning of the song before tossing it into the crowd. He closed the set with a flurry of big numbers including “Fly Like and Eagle” and “Rockin’ Me.”
The “Space Cowboy” delivered this time. He really had the fans enjoying and dancing to the music as they mingled and forgot about their problems for a bit. That’s what music is supposed to do and Miller did a commendable job in doing just that.
Setlist:
Jungle Love
Take the Money and Run
Abracadabra
Space Cowboy
Living in the USA
One Mint Julep
True Fine Love
Sugar Babe
Shu ba da du ma ma ma
Lovin’ Cup
Blues with a Feeling (Little Walter cover)
Acoustic medley of Jet Airliner, Wild Mountain Honey, Gangster of Love (Johnny Watson cover)
Dance Dance
The Joker
Fly Like an Eagle
Serenade
The Stake
Rockin’ Me
Encore:
Swingtown
Jet Airliner
We would like to thank Maria Hays from Artpark for her assistance in obtaining credentials so BackstageAxxess can review the show.
