Duff will be back in that Austin area in October when Guns and Roses headline the ACL festival. Whether or not the crowd was expecting the country lean, they left with wide, toothy smiles. Duff McKagan is the real deal, and his authenticity shines bright. Standing on the edge of the speaker, he leaned out into the audience to get as close to them as possible as he sang the lyrics, “My love I give to you.” You could sense that he meant what he sang. And of course, in true GnR fashion, he isn’t afraid to liberally sprinkle curse words into his lyrics to make a point.ĭuff closed with “Deepest Shade,” a beautiful song from Seattle musician Mark Lanegan. “Parkland” addresses gun violence, mentioning the all-too-frequent school shootings by name. “Last September” takes a stark look at the #MeToo movement and what it means to be a real man. He tackles some pretty heavy subject matter.
His songs eschew the typical country subject matter of beer, women, and trucks and are instead topical and relevant. And for whatever his singing lacked, he more than made up for with his lyrics and attitude. McKagan’s vocals are not the strongest, but no one seemed to care. Duff spent the night alternating between acoustic and electric guitar, smiling from ear to ear.
Halfway through the set, Duff brought out local guitar-slinger Jesse Dayton, who provided some rockabilly-tinged pyrotechnics to a couple of tunes. Aubrey Richmond added the perfect icing on the musical case with her magnificent fiddle playing and beautiful vocals. Shooter held down keyboard duties, dishing up raucous piano and gospel organ flourishes. Drummer Jamie Douglass and bass player Ted Russell Kamp kept the groove on lockdown, while guitarist/pedal steel player John Schreffler laid down some delicious licks and solid rhythm. Opener Shooter Jennings’ band backed McKagan, and they served up a tight mix of country and rock that took the songs off Duff’s recently released album “Tenderness” and sent them into overdrive. The band’s 17-song set consisted of all 11 songs from “Tenderness,” along with some well-selected covers, including Mad Season’s “River of Deceit” and a rousing rendition of “Clampdown” by The Clash. Instead, he pulled some deep tracks from the band’s 1991 album “Use Your Illusion I.” These songs fit perfectly in style and tone and served as semi-familiar touchstones among the night’s many new songs. McKagan did play a few Guns and Roses tunes, but they were songs not necessarily known to the general audience. This show was a unique opportunity to see another side of the bass player from one of the world’s biggest rock groups. Sadly for them, the show had little resemblance to a G’n’R concert and more in common with a country-rock showdown. There were a lot of Guns and Roses t-shirts at the Duff McKagan show at Austin’s Scoot Inn.
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