What’s the longest you’ve had to wait to catch a show? A year? Year and a half? Two years? How about half a decade? That’s how long myself and roughly 1,850 others held out prior to Robin Trower’s return to Chicago this past Friday at the Copernicus Center. The legendary guitarist’s ongoing run of dates was initially scheduled for 2020, but was subsequently dashed thanks to the thing that shall not be mentioned. Fast forward a few years later, and it looked like Trower would finally make it upon these here shores, only to be sidelined by health issues. Come the announcement of this 2025 jaunt, I hoped for the best (“Third time’s the charm.”), but prepared for the worst. In other words, until Trower was there, upon that stage, physically in front of me, I wouldn’t believe it. So imagine my surprise when last Friday, not only was one of my all time favorite guitar heroes right there, onstage, in front of me, but absolutely dominating too!
Accompanied by bassist/vocalist Richard Watts and drummer Chris Taggart (Huge kudos to staying true to the power trio formula!), Trower took to the Copernicus stage to deliver an 80 minute masterclass in six-string wizardry, with zero room to breathe whatsoever. There were no intermissions. No 20 minute drum solos. No acoustic forays. No, at 80 years old, Trower did what he’s done best for over half a century: Fuse hard rock riffage, psychedelic soundscapes, and bluesy soul power into a formidable musical concoction that’ll have you drunk at first sip. His tone remains the greatest in rock history (yes, better than Hendrix, Gilmour, and even the dark lord himself, Iommi), and his playing is as impeccable as ever. If there were any screwups, and I HIGHLY doubt there were, they sure weren’t noticed by yours truly.
Emboldened by a mix that can best be described as loud and clear (with an emphasis on “loud”), Trower’s playing scorched my very soul in the best way possible. I could feel those hard-edged driving riffs rattling my ribcage, grinding my innards with fevered intensity. On the flip side, those gnarly note-bends and subtle tremolo dives seared my skull like a branding iron, piping hot and ready to leave a mark. Amidst it all, the transportation of the audience’s collective psyche to a hallucinogenic state, somewhere between reality and the dreamworld, leaving sold-out crowd mesmerized by every riff, every solo, every phrase, every note…did somebody spike the Kool-Aid?!
As far as the setlist went, it was a blurring of Trower’s storied past and vital present. Sure, the crowd went rightfully wild for classics like “Too Rolling Stoned”, “Daydream”, and the one-two punch of “Day of the Eagle” into “Bridge of Sighs”. That said, “One Go Round” off his latest offering, Come and Find Me, and a block of songs off 2022’s No More Worlds to Conquer came off as far more robust and intense onstage than their studio renditions, leaving this diehard hungry for a live album properly chronicling this jaunt (Perhaps a double LP on vinyl, just in time for Christmas?). Watts faced the daunting task of filling the vocal shoes of not one, but two legendary singers: James Dewar and Jack Bruce, the latter who sang on “Distant Places of the Heart”. Needless to say, Watts honored both with grace and distinction, his soulful, crooning vocal delivery the perfect compliment to Trower’s genius playing.
Come the closing “Little Bit of Sympathy”, the crowd were now on their feet, losing their mind to one of the hardest rocking jams in the Trower canon and wanting the night to last forever. Well aware of the demand, Trower and the gang stuck around for two more songs, “Rise Up Like the Sun” and “Birdsong”, before calling it a night. Admittedly, the 14 song set barely scratched the surface of Trower’s legendary catalog, one that goes back nearly 60 years and spans about 40ish studio albums between solo, Procol Harum, and collaborations, but it did hit the spot and serve as a fitting return to a city that has championed Trower going back to his ’70s heyday. I just hope we don’t have to wait another five years to catch him again! Regardless, for Robin Trower, age is just a number and music is his lifeline. We should all view our mortality through his blues-tinted lenses.
Setlist
- “The Razor’s Edge”
- “Too Rolling Stoned”
- “Wither on the Vine”
- “Somebody Calling”
- “Distant Places of the Heart”
- “One Go Round”
- “It’s Too Late”
- “Day of the Eagle”
- “Bridge of Sighs”
- “No More Worlds to Conquer”
- “Daydream”
- “Little Bit of Sympathy”
Encore
- “Rise Up Like the Sun”
- “Birdsong”
