RAUL MALO at Blues on the Green, Zilker Park 8-18-10

This one I was really looking forward to and it didn't disappoint.

Opening for Raul was Nakia And The Blues Grifters.  I've only seen Nakia a couple of times, in small doses and really liked him.  A great soul voice.  He now has this new band and they are definitely a rocking blues band.  I love him with these guys.  Even though they only played a half hour, I feel like this band is doing him justice.  It was 30 minutes of straight ahead blues with some rock thrown in along with a ballad.  They really tore it up.  Nakia has the soul of the young Joe Cocker plus a great voice so that's a heckuva combination.  For his half hour, he had the entire crowd, and it was large, in the palm of his hand.  Everybody was into it.  His lead guitarist was smokin.'  I tell ya, if you haven't seen Nakia, check him out:  

http://nakia.net/

I know he does a Happy Hour show sometimes on Fridays at the Lucky Lounge.  I plan on getting to one real soon.

Raul had a slimmed down lineup on this night.  Last time I saw him in a full show was at the Continental Club the last night of the ACL Festival.  He had a horn section, keyboard player and The Trishas that evening.  It was one of the best shows I saw all year.  For this concert, it was just Raul, drummer, bass and accordion.  Even though it was stripped down, it was still a great show.  That accordion took all the horn parts, solos, filled large spaces and filled them well.  They played an hour and came back out for a 4 song encore.  We got all the hits including:  "Dance The Night Away" "Moonlight Kiss" "Lucky One" "Every Little Thing About You" and a beautiful Spanish language song I don't know the name of.  Everyone was dancing to Raul.  His music just has that rhythm.  You gotta shake it.  Didn't matter that it had been 103 degrees that day and was still muggy as all get out.
Oh yeah, got a pretty good video of Raul on "Dance The Night Away" here:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJmBEGzECI0