Steve Miller Band Concert Review

You’re sitting in your lawn chair, enjoying the warm summer day with about 8,000 or so of your closest friends while a light breeze blows as geese lift off from the Deschutes River and ducks go quacking by. Then, someone says, “Hey, Steve, how about playing a few tunes?”

That’s what the Steve Miller Band concert was like at the Les Schwab Amphitheater in Bend, Oregon on a recent July evening. No introduction, no fanfare, just the beginning synthesizer notes of “Threshold” to make you look up to see the band settling on the stage.

And here we go.

The band members in black, Steve Miller in a light blue shirt and jeans, still looking trim and fresh at 66, play with a sound that is smooth, lines that are clean and licks that are hot. Since his first guitar lesson from his godfather, Les Paul, at age 5, Steve Miller has loved and collected guitars. His stage is designed by Broadway director Rob Roth and has a swirl of guitars from his personal collection in a “guitar galaxy” encircling the world’s largest guitar with the tuning pegs turned into working LED lights. It serves as the backdrop for some really fun party music.

The band: Kenny Lee Lewis on bass and guitars, Gordy Knudtson on drums, Joseph Wooten on keyboards and Sonny Charles stepping into the rather large and irreplaceable shoes of the late beloved Norton Buffalo on vocals are obviously having the time of their lives on this tour as they rip through a very tight 2 1/2 hour-long set. Greatest hits are blended into new songs from the recently released Bingo!, leaving the audience satisfied, entertained and thoroughly rocked.

Miller’s guitar pedigree cannot be denied and his work is a joy to experience. While many can and have argued his songs show evidence of being lyrically challenged, get over it. This is for fun. “Jet Airliner” segued straight into the “whoo! whoo!” of “Take the Money and Run” which, without pause, blended into a faster-than-studio tempo of “Mercury Blues”.

Next was an Earl King cover, “Come On (Let the Good Times Roll)” then “Further on Up the Road” (which most classic rock fans will remember best as covered by Eric Clapton) sung by Sonny Charles.

Mr. Charles, as previously mentioned, is a new addition to the band. Norton Buffalo was Steve Miller’s backup vocalist (“my partner in harmony”) and harp player "for 33 1/3 years." He died suddenly last October only 60 days after being diagnosed with lung and brain cancer. Steve said Norton would try to get him to sing incorrect lyrics to songs such as “The Joker” by repeatedly singing “some people call me roast beef” instead of “some people call me Maurice” before the show. So before Steve played “Wild Mountain Honey” solo on a 12-string guitar (a song he said he sang with Norton “probably 2,000 times and never got tired of it”) he said, “Norton, if you’re watching from heaven, say hi to Les Paul and I hope you’re having some roast beef.”

“Dance Dance Dance” flowed into a faux reggae version of “The Joker” (Maurice was sung correctly) then “Abracadabra” – lame lyrics and all -- was next, but the guys were enjoying themselves so much that all was forgiven. “Ooh Poo Pah Doo”, a Jessie Hill cover, was dedicated to our fellow Americans in the Gulf and was one of several guitar-heavy cuts from the Bingo! album.

Finishing off the main set were “The Stake”, “Living in the U.S.A.” and “Rock’n Me” (for which Dylan Brown, a freshman from Santiago High School in Corona, California, was brought on stage to jam with the band.)

The cause nearest and dearest to Steve Miller’s heart is Kids Rock Free, which he has been running for 11 years, serving over 12,000 students. Funded and equipped by Steve and Fender Guitar, Kids Rock Free is set up to augment music programs in the schools. Dylan Brown was one of the students from the program and has played in 19 shows of the tour so far.

Dylan also jammed on three out of the four encores which the band played as requests. Yeah, requests. “Fly Like an Eagle” featured an extended dueling solo contest between Steve and Dylan. “Space Cowboy”, “Swing Town” and “Jungle Love” ended an evening of fat guitars and a lot of fun.