Mark Lizotte a.k.a. Johnny Diesel has proven on recent tours that he is still one of Australia’s finest live artists.
On his new tour to promote the new album “Let It Fly”, his trademark howling vocals and impressive (and often underrated) guitar work are not as prominent as on aforementioned tours, since he is now flirting with country and folk.
In particular he has grown fond of country-folk singer Tim Chaisson, who is special guest and supporting act on this tour.
The young Canadian singer songwriter seems like a friendly and likeable guy, but his middle of the road country-folk fluff goes in one ear and out the other and the best moments in his performance come when he’s playing the violin,.
Chaisson has been performing for about 13 years already, yet surprisingly he does not come across as confident onstage. Perhaps this is due to the mild response from a crowd that came for powerful pop-rock and instead was treated to quieter tunes unfitting that proved an unfitting support act to the main performer..
Diesel himself started off promising with ‘Moneymaker’, the opening track of his new album Let It Fly. followed straight away by classics ‘One More Time and Man Alive’. The crowd clearly enjoyed hearing these hits again.
After this great start Chaisson joined Diesel onstage for several songs; first of which was ‘Cupid’s Embrace’, one of the weaker songs of the new album ,. Luckily they made a quick comeback with the banjo tune ‘By Your Throne’. As expected the twosome also performed their duet ‘Last Shower’, which was as unconvincing live as it was on the album.
Just when Diesel was about to start the intro to ‘Days Like These’, an obviously not too frequent concert-goer in the front rows provided some great laughs when he politely returned a guitar pick that Diesel had thrown into the audience. The clearly surprised singer mentioned how no one has ever returned one of those back to him before.
For the last songs of the night the singer was accompanied not just by Chaisson, but also by his 18-year-old daughter Lila Gold. The father -daughter duet ‘If You Let Me Give’ did not sound overly inspired, and when the older and younger Lizottes performed a cover of the Rolling Stones-classic ‘Wild Horses’, a sedated Shetland pony would have been enough to drag us away.
It seemed like Diesel was continually switching back a few gears to give more attention to Chaisson and his daughter, but due to his holding back, the crowd did not get the 100% Diesel at full force they might have been expecting.
Although still a very impressive vocalist and guitar player, this Diesel is a far cry from the inspired axeman that as recently as last year still howled and shredded like a man possessed.
Even set closer ‘Cry In Shame’ didn’t have the power or bite it usually has, and that does make one want to cry in shame.
Next time less country and folk please, and more of Diesel’s trademark mixture of blues, rock, soul and passion again.
