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... by Joanne Corsano ... joanne@picturelake.com

Jimi K. Bones and Willie Nile
click thumbnail to see a photo gallery
of the concert

Willie Nile (vocals, guitar), Johnny Pisano (bass, vocals), Jimi K Bones (guitar, vocals), Jon Weber (drums).

Run - Wild Wild World - We Are, We Are - Innocent Ones - Lost and Lonely World - Trying To Make a Living in the USA - Whole World With You - Fall On Me - Back Street Slide - Irish Goodbye - Give Me Tomorrow - Sweet Jane {Lou Reed} - House of a Thousand Guitars - Run Free - One Guitar - I Want To Be Sedated {The Ramones}

Willie Nile backed up by Johnny Pisano, Jimi K Bones, and Jon Weber played the Iron Horse for the first time since the venue re-opened, post Covid. They were fantastic, visiting the new album and all stages of Willie's long career. It was a truly stellar set list, kicking off with "Run," and featuring crowd favorites from throughout his career as well as five rockers from the new record. These included "Irish Goodbye," that ultimate audience singalong. No real ballads tonight. He ended the show with The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated," during which Willie put down his guitar and pranced about the stage doing his best rawk star. What fun!

Willie talked about the phone call that his father, Robert Noonan the elder, recently received on his 108th birthday from President Joe Biden. When you've got a thing like that going on in your immediate family it pretty much makes everything else shrink to insignificance. Mr. Noonan the elder truly is a humble man, living in the home in Buffalo, NY where he raised his family.

Willie had to rush the show, but just a little, since there was another band coming on after him. It would have been my suggestion to skip the opening act, which is not at all meant as a criticism of Dan Zukergood and the Almost Happy Band, whom we've seen open for Willie four times now, because they really are good, but this audience doesn't come to see the opener, and honestly, I don't see how having an opener enhances the experience in any way. When your headliner is Willie Nile, for the love of pete, just let him play. In the usual fashion, Willie had Dan come up on stage and sing along on "One Guitar."

After the show we hobnobbed a bit with Johnny Pi, Kathy the merch girl, and Willie himself, who seemed impressed that we'd travelled all the way from Cape Cod, about 2 1/2 hours, to see him perform. (His exact words were: You're f*ckin' nuts.) We talked a bit about the phone call to the Noonan patriarch from President Biden, and Willie said there is a film maker who's making a documentary about him and that he took a better movie of the phone call than the cell phone video (taken by Willie's sister) that has been available on Facebook. Looking forward to that documentary, for sure!

This is the first time we've been to the Iron Horse since it's been renovated, post Covid closure. There have been improvements. Doors open at a certain time, they give you a card with a number and you can wait inside the barroom section (separate from the performance space) instead of outside in the cold, then when doors open you're seated by the number indicating what place you were in line. There are first floor restrooms now, much nicer than the old downstairs bathrooms. Food is good, and on this particular night they were so busy Chris Freeman, formerly of Parsonsfield, who is now the Executive Director of the IH, was pitching in, bringing food around to the tables.

But the thing nobody says about the IH is that there just really aren't that many seats with good views, simply because of the shape of the room. The Iron Horse is a fairly big room with a large space on the first floor and a balcony, but the stage is in one of the corners of the downstairs so a fairly small minority of the seats is actually in front of the stage. And that minority of the seats is arranged in a long and narrow rectangle, in which there are exactly three tables in front of the stage (the "front row"), so even if you're in the section in front of the stage you're not likely to be very close. Concert Going Partner and I got there a half hour before the doors opened and got a number close enough to the front to get a second row table, close enough to see fairly well and get some decent pictures.

Then there's a section on a riser to the side that has just three tables where you get a decent view, and the rest of that section is receding from the stage. Then there's the upstairs, already fairly far from the side of the stage, where if you're by the railing ("first row balcony"), and not behind a post, you get a pretty good view although at a distance, but then the rest of the seats are really far from the stage, and I can't imagine you're getting much of a view. Maybe most people who come to a concert don't really care if they can see very well, but that doesn't seem right to me.

I realize the hard working and well intentioned people who run the Iron Horse are working with what they have, and it is not my intention to criticize them, but I am just saying it as I see it. Unless you're among the very first few people in line, you really aren't getting much of a view. I do wonder if there's any way the performance space could be reconfigured -- move the stage 45 degrees to the side of the seating area? Has anything like this been considered?

Here is a page with a handy list of links to all pages on this website with content relating to Willie Nile. (or shall we say Robert Noonan the younger)