Was soll ich hier sagen? Die Tiny Desk Konzerte, seit sie aus der Corona-Unterbrechung zurück sind, enttäuschen nie. Auch Lee Fields mitsamt Band (es sind nicht die Expressions glaube ich, bin aber nicht sicher) reisst hier ab. Läuft ganz wunderbar durch und falls Ihr Lee Fields bisher nicht auf dem Zettel hattet, ohnehin eine Empfehlung meinerseits.

Hier drüben habe ich ihn vor knapp 11 Jahren mal interviewed. Sehr sympathischer Typ! Er spielt in einer Liga mit Charles Bradley und Sharon Jones.

You can’t see it on the screen, but there’s a piece of paper taped to the Desk in front of Lee Fields throughout the R&B, blues and soul veteran’s long-awaited Tiny Desk debut. It’s got the set list, of course, but also an instruction to the singer: „NO AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION!!!!“

It speaks to Fields‘ legendary showmanship — he’s often been dubbed „Little JB“ due to his similarities to the hardest-working man in show business — that his team felt a need to rein in his generous impulse to work any crowd before him, knowing the time constraints of a Tiny Desk concert. It speaks further to Fields‘ showmanship that he ended up ignoring the directive: By the time he got to the set-closing „Two Jobs,“ which features a call-and-response listing the hours in the day, he was yelling, „I want y’all to count the hours!“

Though pandemic-era protocols limit the size of the Tiny Desk crowds these days, Fields got the shouts of approval (and participation) he was seeking, as he barreled through three songs from last year’s Sentimental Fool and one relative oldie from a career that stretches all the way back to the late ’60s: the self-explanatorily titled „Ladies,“ from his 2009 album My World.

SET LIST
„Forever“
„Ladies“
„What Did I Do“
„Two Jobs“