Concert Review: Heart at Wildhorse Saloon, Nashville, TN 8/9/2008

Heart has been one of my favorite female bands for a good long time. They have classic songs, great vocals, more hits than you can count on two hands, and hard rock, along with some great videos during the MTV era. That puts them way up on my list. So I was expecting to be blown away tonight.

Well, the show was more like a tropical storm rather than a hurricane. Were there great performances? Yes. Did they play all those classic hits? Some. Were Ann Wilson's legendary vocals in top form? Yes. Was Nancy Wilson as energetic and showy as ever? Yes. So why did I leave only half satisfied?

For starters, the show was a bit on the short side. Maybe this was more psychological than actual because they said their first goodnight after about 55 minutes! With two encores they barely squeaked out an hour and a half of playing time. That's much too short for a group of their stature. But this wasn't the biggest disappointment for me. On my quick list they have at least 14 classic hits (I know there are more) and we only heard 8. As a matter of fact, they only played 10 of their own songs.

They did 5 cover songs, but that's nothing new. They've been doing that for years, most notably Led Zeppelin songs. I'm okay with that, but only if I hear all of their own hits too. "Immigrant Song", featuring strong vocals by Ann Wilson, and "Going to California", done acoustic style with Nancy Wilson doing some nice electric mandolin work, were both great to hear. The other 3 covers were John Lennon's "Isolation" (a great song, but I didn't like Heart's interpretation), Tom Petty's "You Wreck Me" (featuring great vocals by Nancy), and an inspiring "Love Reign O'er Me" (The Who) (that featured inimitable vocals by Ann) rounded out the covers. I believe Ann sings the latter better than Roger Daltrey these days.

So what notables did we hear? A so-so "Magic Man" (but the crowd went nuts), "Straight On For You" (excellent), "Never" (good), "These Dreams", "How Do I Get You Alone" (nice work by Ann, Nancy, and keyboard player Debbie Shair), "Barracuda", and "Crazy On You" (my teenage fantasy) with hints of "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" and "Kansas City" woven in. If these were all of their greatest hits I might have gone home totally fulfilled, because the performances were, for the most part, fantastic.

But consider what we didn't hear. Not to be heard were "If Looks Could Kill", "All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You", the hard-rocking "Even It Up", "Heartless", "Kick It Out", and "What About Love". I'm sure real Heart fans can think of many more they wouldn't mind hearing. So if I had my choice I'd rather hear the missing Heart songs over the cover songs, as good as they were.

So with all these killer songs off the set list, it just sounded silly to me when Ann Wilson said, in effect, "we can only do one more because these are all the songs we know" before the final encore song, "Dreamboat Annie". What she should have said was these were all the songs they were prepared to play. I also thought it was a bit anti-climactic to end with a slow song like "Dreamboat", but it did feature some nice flute by Ann.

Heart has been touring this year on a triple bill with Journey and Cheap Trick. I suppose they can only play a short set when there are three acts. Perhaps that explains why they ran out of songs at the Wildhorse. This was a shame because I truly believe the band was having a great time. Ann actually said she loved being here and wished they could play more. She also said "this is what makes it all worthwhile", which I took to mean playing their own show in front of their own fans, up close in a smaller venue.

The band and crowd were truly feeding off each other, and it's hard to get that going anywhere. I doubt it's happening in their triple bill shows in those large arenas. But the Wildhorse, which was packed, is much more conducive to this. So when I realized it was happening tonight it was truly exciting for me, and I'm sure it was for them too. They loved being here and we loved the show. Too bad they weren't fully prepared for it. It could have been amazing instead of just great.