Blackfoot
April 5, 2009
Jackson Rancheria Casino

By Dan Wall 

Set List: Good Morning, Wishing Well, Morning Dew, I Got A Line on You, Baby Blue, Great Spirit, Fox Chase, Left Turn On a Red Light, Sunshine Again, Born to Lose, Rollin’ and Tumblin’, Fly Away, Highway Song, Train Train. 95 minutes. 

For every classic rock band reformation that routinely sells out arenas and piques the interest of thousands of fans, there is one like Blackfoot’s, which is played out at festivals, small clubs and casinos. 

This is certainly not an indictment on the band or its talent, which is still considerable. But just consider this past weekend, when the band played in Mesa, Arizona, jetted to Anaheim, California and then performed at Jackson’s (CA) Rancheria casino, in front of about 300 hearty souls Sunday night. 

It certainly looked like there was a fair amount of hardcore Blackfoot fans in attendance, but there was also a few who looked like they stumbled in because the buffet was full. The show started at 6 p.m. and was over by 7:35 p.m., not exactly the way most of us remember Ricky Medlocke and his wild bunch back in the 80’s. 

Then again, Medlocke isn’t here. The long-haired guitarist now treds the boards with Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Southern rock greats that Blackfoot tried so hard to emulate during its heyday. In his place is Bobby Barth, the one-time Axe guitarist who has fronted the band since its 2004 reformation, alongside longtime members Greg T. Walker (bass), Charlie Hargrett (guitar) and new drummer Scott Craig. 

The quartet does what most of us would expect, which is tune up, plug in and play the bulk of its biggest songs. “Good Morning,” “Fly Away,” “Highway Song” and “Train Train” were all there, but if there was a complaint, it’s that the band played a bunch of covers (something they do very well) instead of classics such as “Road Fever,” “Every Man Should Know” and “On the Run.” Doing covers is one thing, but not at the expense of your best tunes. 

Barth does a pretty decent job of singing Medlocke’s parts, and he and Hargrett can play in tandem as well as any guitarists still doing this style of music onstage. The real strength of this band is the rhythm section; Walker and Craig were locked in a groove from the outset and really powered the new “Born to Lose,” a song that bodes well for a new Blackfoot record set to come out later this year. 

Blackfoot was never very big in this part of the country; this was the band’s first appearance in Northern California since 1983 (I know the date-July 31, 1983-the day I met my wife), as the band spends most of it’s time in the South and Midwest playing to a much bigger fan base. Amazingly, the group had a huge following in Europe, and its 1982 live record Highway Song Live is proof of this, as the English crowd really picks up the band during one of its greatest performances.  

But Blackfoot was never really packaged as well here as the other Southern bands that did get big all over the country. The Outlaws seemed to follow Skynyrd everywhere, and Molly Hatchet took over once Skynyrd was decimated in the plane crash. Blackfoot was put on tours with The Who, Def Leppard, UFO, Foghat, REO Speedwagon and Krokus, great bands all, but not exactly groups who played the guitar army-based, Southern rock rebel stuff that made Skynyrd so big. So the band sort of fizzled out in the mid 80’s and has had a decent reformation since 2004, but will never be thought of in the way that Skynyrd, Hatchet and The Outlaws were. Too bad, because when Blackfoot was on (once again, check out that live album), the band could crush.

The boys don’t really crush anymore, but they can still entertain with the best that classic rock can offer. Go see them if you can; hopefully, it won’t be on a Sunday at 6 p.m. in a casino in the middle of nowhere.