Tom Jones played Bowery Ballroom (pics, setlist)

photos by PSquared Photography

Tom Jones @ Bowery Ballroom, 5/18/2013

Jones’s voice is so gigantic that it can seem like a put-on, and he’s always known it; part of his charm is the way he’ll play it up, often with a hoarse cackle at the end of a line, or between songs. But this is a good time for adult-leaning vocal interpreters from the rock generation, especially with atmospheric backing – see Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s Raising Sand, for starters. Jones’s new Spirit in the Room (Rounder), produced by Ethan Johns, isn’t the first time Jones has put together something of this nature – Johns also produced 2010’s gospel-leaning Praise & Blame – but it’s clearly a departure from his Vegas-identified norm. – [Rolling Stone]

Tom Jones, who doesn’t normally play small rooms like Bowery Ballroom, did just that this past weekend (5/18), one of a few club shows plugging his rootsy new album, Spirit in the Room. Those hoping for a glitzy, hit-packed set may have been disappointed — only his 1966 #1 cover of “Green Green Grass of Home” was played (no “It’s Not Unusual” or “Delilah”) — but they did get the Welsh legend’s mighty pipes in an intimate setting without the sound of slot machines in the background.

Opening the night with a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Tower of Song,” he also gave the audience earthy renditions of The First Edition’s “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In),” John Lee Hooker’s “Burning Hell” and others, plus a tribute to the recently-departed George Jones with “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” Setlist is below.

More pictures from Bowery, plus video of him performing “Green Green Grass,” below…

—

Tom Jones at Bowery Ballroom 5/18/13

SETLIST: Tom Jones @ Bowery Ballroom, 5/18/2013
Tower of Song (Leonard Cohen cover)
(I Want To) Come Home (Paul McCartney cover)
Hit Or Miss (Odetta cover)
Dimming of the Day (Richard Thompson cover)
Lord Help
Bad as Me (Tom Waits cover)
Didn’t It Rain
All Blues Hail Mary (Joe Henry cover)
Soul of a Man (Blind Willie Johnson cover)
Burning Hell (John Lee Hooker cover)
What Good Am I? (Bob Dylan cover)
Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) (The First Edition cover)
Nobody’s Fault but Mine (Blind Willie Johnson cover)
Strange Things (Sister Rosetta Tharpe cover)
He Stopped Loving Her Today (George Jones cover)
One Night (Elvis Presley cover)
Traveling Shoes
Run On
Don’t Knock
Encore:
If I Give My Soul (Billy Joe Shaver cover)
Green, Green Grass of Home (Johnny Darrell cover)
End of the Road (Jerry Lee Lewis cover)