The Damn Truth takes the stage with their intro tape. “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane fills the air, and as the singer/force of nature, Lee-La Baum, joins in, you realize it’s the perfect entry point for them.
On one hand, the Montreal band is a hard rock group, and a very good one at that. But there’s another side to them where you can sense they’re just a heartbeat away from dancing naked around a campfire at some commune.
This aspect comes through in their music. While “This Is Who We Are Now” carries the sass and confidence of a band that recorded with Bob Rock (Bon Jovi, etc.), they operate on a slightly different musical plane. There’s something mystical about “Lonely,” for example. By the time Lee-La, in full fire and brimstone mode, asks, “Can you hear me?” (a somewhat redundant question given the power of her voice, which can probably be heard a mile away where Europe is playing), you know you’re witnessing something special.
In short, The Damn Truth is a fine band but more unconventional than they appear. “Look Innocent” might be the only song in history to declare that “dogs are the best.” However, by the end of it all, during “Tomorrow,” they’re jumping for joy, quite literally, around the stage.
They are a band steeped in music. A couple of hours after they leave the stage, they walk past me while the headline set is playing, and Lee-La is singing Deep Purple word for word. The Damn Truth knows rock history and is good enough to be a part of its future.
“It’s good to be home,” are Glenn Hughes’ first words as “Stormbringer” plays, and he repeats this phrase time and again. In an odd way, he means it literally and metaphorically here.
Born in nearby Cannock, a 22-year-old Black Country kid when he went into the studio to record “Burn” with Deep Purple in the summer of ’73.
Here, he celebrates this with 2000 of his nearest and dearest. And my goodness, Glenn Hughes is an astonishing performer.
The broad facts are these: he’s here with an incredible band, including arguably the best Hammond Organ player around, Bob Fridzema, drummer Ash Sheehan, and Soren Andersson—who produced his last solo album—to breathe new life into Deep Purple MK III songs.
The real story, though, is how much it means. “Stormbringer” is as good an opener as you’d see, but the organ in “Might Just Take Your Life” is next level.
Andersson’s guitar work is wonderful throughout, but never better than on “Sail Away.” During that song, Hughes walks over to where MV is sitting, and his smile lights up the room.
As a kind of centerpiece, they make “You Fool No One” and “High Ball Shooter” a medley interspersed with an Ash Sheehan drum solo. When the band returns, they jam through a thunderous “Mistreated” while Hughes affords himself a bass solo on “Getting Tighter.”
Throughout the set, which stretched to two hours, Hughes shared tales of the Purple days. One of them revealed how “You Keep On Moving” should have been on “Burn,” but Richie Blackmore refused, so it ended up on “Come Taste The Band” instead. It was a fitting closer here.
That said, the encore was jaw-dropping. Hughes ditched the bass for “Highway Star” and became a frontman only. Glorious, bombastic, and effortlessly cool, he still is. Bass back on, he said he had time for one more. To the surprise of no one, it’s “Burn,” and, to the surprise of no one, it is little short of sensational.
When he left The Dead Daisies (a band that was good before he joined but arguably the best hard rock band around with him in it), he’d shared earlier that he wanted to “come back home to my music.”
He’s done that here, in every sense of the word, and it felt special.
