A Fool to Care, by Boz Scaggs

Author

By Alan Segal

Publish Date

May 8, 2015

Scaggs is like a fine wine that's gotten better with age.

I first saw Boz Scaggs in 1966 at the Matrix in San Francisco. He was playing in a jazz-rock combo with some cat named Steve Miller. Fast-forward 50 years and they are both award-winning senior-citizen music icons. Miller still tours behind his old radio hits. But Scaggs is making new studio albums to tour behind. Both are scheduled to play Humphreys by the Bay in July.

Past Event

Boz Scaggs

Thursday, July 9, 2015, 7:30 p.m.
Humphreys by the Bay, 2241 Shelter Island Drive, San Diego
$65

One of the songs Scaggs penned for this set, “Hell to Pay,” features a duet with Bonnie Raitt and is a retro-rocking Texas-blues number about corruption — "Bought me a senator down in Texas/ got me a judge down in New Orleans." While most of the remaining cuts are rediscovered covers: a soul ballad from the Spinners, “Love Don't Love Nobody,” never sounded better; a folksy blues duet with Lucinda Williams of the long-forgotten “Whispering Pines,” first recorded by the Band. Scaggs also samples a contemporary Latin tango beat, backed by piano and accordion, on “Last Tango on 16th Street,” about a gentrified hipster neighborhood, the Mission District in his hometown San Francisco.

The title song is a Fats Domino–inspired sound and melody brought to life by Scaggs's ageless pipes. While “Small Town Talk” and “Blood Pressure” are two Bayou-rocking grooves that sound as if they’re drifting from the open-door music clubs on Bourbon Street.