By SEAN DALY and JOHN FLEMING
Published August 24, 2006
Riding in with the James Gang
If it weren't for Keith Richards, the high priest of besotted guitar madmen, we'd all be making a lot more Joe Walsh jokes.
Like Richards, Walsh, center, has spent a lifetime wandering about in his own party-time universe, a good-time riffer who's his happiest with a guitar in his hands and a crowd at his feet.
Because of his infamous celebratory habits - he did rise to fame in the '70s, after all - the 59-year-old is no doubt fuzzy on the details of his greatest hits:
As leader of the James Gang, Walsh provided such enduring happy-hour hits as Funk #49 and Walk Away. As a picker-for-hire in the Eagles, Walsh provided the famous licks for Hotel California. And as a solo star, he provided that debauched rock-star credo Life's Been Good.
The James Gang is currently on a reunion kick, so expect one of rock's great eccentrics to provide plenty of jokes, plenty of hits and scores of long, winding guitar solos that will have you staring at your watch but grinning all the same.
The James Gang - Dale Peters on bass, Walsh on guitar and Jimmy Fox on percussion - performs at 7 p.m. Sunday at Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen-Booth Road, Clearwater. $57-$102. (727) 791-7400.
- SEAN DALY, Times pop music critic
The fine art of guitar
Guitarist David Burgess is going the Brazilian route this weekend in a recital at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. His program includes the familiar (Four Pieces by Antonio Carlos Jobim) and the less-known (works by Ernesto Nazareth, Alfredo da Rocha Viana, Joao Pernambuco and Luiz Bonfa). Burgess, winner of the Andres Segovia Fellowship Competition, studied with the Spanish guitar master. The concert is at 2 p.m. Sunday in the museum's Marly Room. $8, $15. (727) 896-2667.
