Arts & Entertainment writers offer capsule comments on this, that and the other thing ...

Don Henley and Stevie Nicks

Their bands paralleled each other throughout the 1970s, and their solo careers did the same in the 1980s. Now Don Henley and Stevie Nicks intersect on their shared coast-to-coast concert tour.

The two headliners brought their overlapping performances to a soggy Post-Gazette Pavilion on Saturday. Four songs into the former Eagles songwriter's set, as he sang the "Hotel California" line, "There she stood in the doorway ...," Nicks appeared in silhouette. The Fleetwood Mac star stayed for three songs, then left Henley to finish the set with his road band.

After a quick stage set, Nicks and her band played four songs before Henley joined them for two. The co-headliners shared a three-song encore and a cuddly slow dance to close the show.

Artistically, it was interesting to hear the old friends dueting on each other's classic songs. With her husky whisper and growl, Nicks took the lower register while Henley wailed the high parts of his "Hotel California," "New York Minute" and "Last Worthless Evening" and her "Gold Dust Woman" and "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around." They reprised their hit duet "Leather and Lace" and covered a beautiful Bonnie Raitt ballad, "Circle Dance."

True to form, Henley stuck to familiar studio versions of his songs and those he wrote with The Eagles. Nicks, however, stretched and molded her parts of the show to better fill the needs of a live performance.

-- Review by John Hayes,
Post-Gazette staff writer

Drive-By Truckers

"The clouds started forming at 5 o'clock p.m.," noted Patterson Hood as his Drive-By Truckers hit the stage with an ominous opening shot of "Tornadoes." But the rains held off for the length of the Truckers' set Saturday at the Three Rivers Arts Festival, as they treated the faithful at Point State Park to a spirited sampler of their homegrown Southern rock revival.

The three-guitar army stood tall, but what really positions this band as the natural heirs to Skynyrd's throne are the heartfelt lyrics, shot clean through with unsinkable pride in their working-class roots.

In "Sinkhole," a family farmer plots revenge in the face of a bank foreclosure. In "The Buford Stick," Hood sings, "I'm just a hard-working man with a family to feed." But the story that really connected with the crowd was the Truckers' triumphant performance of "Let There Be Rock." The metal salute was flying everywhere as Hood hit the final refrain of "I heard Bon Scott singing 'Let There Be Rock' " -- as steeped in rock 'n' roll mythology as any Springsteen gesture, and just as effective.

-- Review by Ed Masley,
Post-Gazette pop music critic

Chick Corea

Chick Corea and his quintet, Touchstone, touched down on Pittsburgh for the Three Rivers Arts Festival Sunday night, electrifying the large audience with alarmingly focused music and highly stylized solos.

Corea, who was celebrating his birthday, and bassist Carles Benavent, percussionist Rubem Dantas, flutist/saxophonist Jorge Pardo and drummer Tom Brechtlein consolidated all the elements of music that have come to characterize the band leader: flamenco rhythms, parade and march rhythms, tango and some Afro-Cuban rhythms thrown in for good measure.

The early part of the evening concentrated mostly on music from "Touchstone," the group's self-titled new recording. Corea made the title song radiate with beauty, opening the lengthy piece with solo piano before it morphed into an elaborate compositional vehicle for Pardo's sailing flute solos.

I've been a fan of Corea since the days he formed Return to Forever and later during his plugged-in forays with Miles Davis when they recorded "Filles de Kilimanjaro," "In a Silent Way" and "Bitches Brew." While some of the evening brought that period to mind, especially during the throbbing, arching solos by Benavent on "Alan Corday," it also was a reminder of how creative and musically restless Corea has been.

-- Review by Nate Guidry,
Post-Gazette jazz critic

Darryl Worley

Don't blame Darryl.

The country up-and-comer was hired to headline radio Y108's 12th annual Hot Country Jam Sunday at the Post-Gazette Pavilion. The audience, however, was more interested in the rock-bottom ticket prices and six hours of nonstop country music.

Even worse for Worley, he had the unenviable task of coming on after wild man Phil Vassar, one of the most energetic and explosive heart throbs on the mainstream country play list.

While Worley's a good writer of intellectual ballads, his heavy themes doused the party atmosphere, and he struggled throughout his 90-minute set. He has some fun, lighter tunes, but radio doesn't play them, and the crowd was reluctant to respond to anything they didn't know.

The painful near-silence between songs was broken only when Worley's band threw in desperate Southern rock covers and played his radio hits "Awful Beautiful Life" and the 9-11 anthem "Have You Forgotten."

Y108 booked by the numbers instead of the vibe. They should have headlined Vassar, a piano-pounding Jerry Lee Lewis for the 21st century who spent an hour dashing all over the stage, spinning on top of his piano and tearing through the audience. His charismatic band The 88s dominated the day with sizzling leads and stretched out stage versions of his well-sung hits "Another Day in Paradise," "American Child," "Six-Pack Summer," "In a Real Love" and the steamy "I'll Take That as a Yes (The Hot Tub Song)."

Little Big Town opened the lawn party with lush harmonies, Hanna-McEuen threw in a half-hour of honky-tonk rock and a fun bluegrass cover of Prince, and Craig Morgan showcased his hits "That's What I Love About Sundays," "Redneck Yacht Club" and "Almost Home."

-- Review by John Hayes,
Post-Gazette staff writer