live @ the Birchmere 9.10.2000
A critic once called the early Seventies recordings of Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks “as wryly romantic as a sloe gin fizz” and Hicks---who has resurrected the Licks and released a new CD---still fits that description: his show before a large and enthusiastic crowd at the Birchmere Sunday night revealed that his music is still as off-center and awkwardly idiosyncratic as it was 30 years ago.
All new members filled the bass-fiddle-guitar chairs in the Hot Licks and a pair of new Lickettes, who contributed minimal percussion and Andrews Sisters-type background cooing, supported Hicks’ rhythm guitar strumming. The set list was a balanced sampler of classic, new (“Beatin' the Heat” is Hicks’ first new recording since 1976) and outside material, all accompanied by the leader’s ultra-droll introductions, some of which were more entertaining than the songs. The intro to UFO tune “Hell, I’d Go”, for example, made alien abduction sound strangely inviting.
The new Licks didn’t swing with the same authority as the classic units did, though guitarist Tom Mitchell often played incisively, but they were competent enough to make versions of nuggets like “Milk Shakin’ Momma”, “Where’s the Money” and “Payday Blues” entertaining. Better were Hicks’ cover selections: “Wild About My Loving”, borrowed from the Kweskin Jug Band, “The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)” a Tom Waits classic which is featured on “Beatin'’ the Heat” and jazz vocalese master Jon Hendricks’ “Somebody Tell Me the Truth”. The highlight for many was Hicks’ best known song “I Scare Myself” (any Hicks fans who haven’t heard Thomas Dolby’s brilliant interpretation of it need to do so) which sums up Hicks and the fine set rather neatly: wry, and romantic, and, well...you get the idea.
Washington Post, September 2000
