Still with six days of live music (Tori Amos and Roadburn Festival; reviews for each day coming soon) and one day of traveling in my bones I made the decision to either take this last chance to see Thomas Jefferson Cowgill as King Dude or to stay home on very short notice. I actually tied it to the result of my annual check with electrocardiogram and stuff at the doctor's. And since that went very well, I said fuck yeah and rewarded myself by directly driving to Hamburg Billstedt.
I expected to see the King play in the underground vampire vault ambience of the Bambi Galore, but the show had been upgraded to to the bigger hall upstairs, where I had never been before. The Kulturpalast presented itself fittingly in classic black as a spacious, but not too big venue.
Even though it was an acoustic show, the man - who played without an opening support act - didn't perform entirely on his own like he did on my first encounter with him during Roadburn 2015, but for the first half of the set was accompanied by another dude and comedy sidekick on tambourine, booming electronic percussion and even melodica.
Under the influence of a hangover from the appearantly long previous night in Copenhagen his voice was raspy and sometimes cracking. But that never worked against him, since it actually suited his sonor singing and the occult goth cowboy persona.
With over a dozen songs and a lot of entertaining banter and a final piece on the piano, I was content with the show ending and canned music coming from the speakers - but then King Dude returned for what almost seemed like a second show, taking (well, mostly rejecting... "can't do that") audience suggestions and figuring out how to play "Her Design" from his last album "Death" without a band. And with a lot of pressure and urgency behind it, it even became my favorite of the over twenty songs of the night.
This was truly the perfect medicine against my post Roadburn blues. (It's real and it hits hard!) Smooth, but nor meandering, often immersive and captivative, yet inbetween the songs also positively silly. A King Dude show just always means great tunes and dry (or not so dry if you ask Jack Daniel's) humour. What a great night!
And given the extertions of the previous week I was really glad that I was still relatively fit. It was only towards the end of my one hour drive home that I had to stop for a half-hour power nap only twenty-something km from home.
Too bad the Dude is quitting. Let's hope to one day see the man in some way again!
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