Five-time Boston Music Award winner (most recently, 2014 Artist of the Year and Album of the Year) Will Dailey took the stage before the sold-out crowd and admitted that he was anxious that nobody would buy tickets for the show! I do not know the extent of Will’s national presence, but his reputation in his home town of Boston is solid and deservedly so.
Will is mostly a roots rocker, at least on his current album, National Throat, which was released last year to critical acclaim. He is still touring to support it – in fact, he is appearing in Nashville tonight (April 7th) at Acme, which is his first time playing in Nashville.
This show was a bit mellower than the album; most of the show was Will on guitars (and banjo for the last song) and lead vocals with Dave Brophy on drums and backing vocals. The show was billed as ‘Will Dailey and Friends’, so he invited several local musicians to sit in with him: Joe ‘Sonny’ Barbado on accordion, Fred on harmonica, and Sarah Miller on vocals.
The set list consisted of many of the songs from National Throat, including ‘We Will Always Be A Band’, ‘Castle of Pretending’, and ‘Once In A Century Storm’. That song garnered much laughter from the audience, causing us to remember (not that any of us could possibly forget) those two once-in-a-century blizzards we had this winter!
It is obvious that Will and Dave have performed together a lot because their good-natured teasing added to my enjoyment of the show; I don’t know if people at the back of the room could hear what was mostly said off-mic
To quote Will regarding National Throat, the title of which is taken from an essay by John Philip Sousa, “It is music felt, not contrived. It is fresh soul untarnished by the grease of cogs or disks, left pure in the midst of a virulent commercial world.” That describes Will’s music much better than I, a relatively new fan, can.
I hope Will continues writing relevant songs for many years to come.
Click here to see photos from this show, which are published on Suze Reviews the Blues.