Untitled Document

JARED JAMES NICHOLS Concert at L' EMPREINTE (SAVIGNY - FRANCE)
12 February, 2023

Article : OLIVIER CARLE
Photos : OLIVIER CARLE & Gilles Gauthier.

After his remarkable performance at Raismes Fest 2018, I was delighted to find Jared James Nichols on stage at l'Empreinte of Savigny. This worthy successor to Ted Nugent and Frank Marino has just released a new high quality eponymous album which he will present to us this evening...

The evening begins with the That's My Jam collective, which, as its name suggests (or not!), brings together musicians from different French groups whose list would be too long to reproduce here. Many singers and a female singer, guitarists, bassists, drummers, backing vocals... for an original, festive and above all good rock'n'roll repertoire. And as a bonus a well-packed cover of Rock'n'Roll Outlaws by Rose Tattoo. It's very good musically and the audience gets caught up in it easily. Congratulations to Fabrice Trovato and his acolytes for this happy initiative which we will no doubt hear about in the months to come!

It is now the turn of the American prodigy guitarist to take the stage. L'Empreinte is crowded and awaits him resolutly. He is as always in a trio with Diego on bass and Dennis on drums. He's going to play us several excerpts from his new opus but oddly enough this one sounds rather hard or even heavy to listen to, so much on stage I had the feeling of attending a much more classic rock performance. Not necessarily a bad thing but we are entitled to expect from a power-trio like this a show in the vein of Mountain or Cream... The other surprise of this set will be its duration. Barely a little over an hour and a dozen titles for this long-awaited return to France, it's still very light! With more than twice his age, the veterans of Saxon offered us a set of more than 2 hours recently... To believe that Jared James Nichols believed himself to be opening the show and not headlining it. Almost as fast as the lightning passage of Phil Rudd (and his recalcitrant dentures) in this same place a few years ago...

In fact, we will have to wait for the encore to finally see the real â€œkillerâ that he is on the guitar. It will be for two carefully chosen covers. First of all Black Sabbath's mythical â€œWar Pigs played to perfection and with an energy close to the original. All that was missing was Richie Faulkner of Judas Priest who had joined him on stage 3 days earlier for this same piece in the Netherlands. And then the no less cult Mississippi Queen by Mountain in a version at least as incendiary as the one he gave us 5 years ago at Raismes... We therefore had to wait for the last 10 minutes of this concert to get our dose of adrenaline and shredding. A little Man In The Boxâ from AIC in the process would have been the icing on the cake but unfortunately we will stop there... JJN has promised to come back more often in our regions in the future and we are looking foreward to it provided that he wants to give us a lot more than tonight... Kriss, if you hear me, we're counting on you to convince him!

Thanks to Julien and Stephane from l'Empreinte - ¨Translation : Y. Philippot-Degand