Joe Jackson – “Sing, You Sinners!” tour
May 16, 2022
Michigan Theatre, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Joe Jackson says he prefers to rearrange his songs when performing live – he doesn’t like to just play the same songs the same way every time. This means you aren’t really sure what you will get when attending a Joe Jackson concert – which can sometimes be a nice surprise.

Our first Joe Jackson concert was back in 2001 on his “Night and Day II” tour. My wife says this was one of her favorite concerts. Joe brought along extra percussion, violins, and keyboards all to help support his “salsa” type versions of songs. The entire evening featured rearranged versions of hits, and definitely was entertaining.

In recent years, Joe has scaled things back to his original 4-piece “rock band” group and featured songs from his early releases – which were more pop/new wave sounding tracks. Gone was the “salsa” vibe.

When I heard Joe was coming to Ann Arbor’s “Michigan Theatre” in May 2022, we decided it might be a good time to revisit his live performance. I wasn’t sure how exciting it would be with just the 4-member band, but was going in with an open mind. One side note is that “Michigan Theatre” was requiring face masks be worn when not seated in the auditorium, still attempting to hold to a COVID-19 policy. Personally, I found this somewhat odd, as it would seem the virus could spread just as easily when not wearing masks in the auditorium – and few were wearing masks when exciting the concert – so the attempt to limit virus spread was likely unsuccessful (in my opinion). On the other hand, the Michigan Theatre is a very nice venue, and I do recommend visiting.

Anyway, around 8:15pm, Joe Jackson and his band came on stage. The band features Joe’s long time bassist Graham Maby, Teddy Kumpel on guitars/vocals, and Doug Yowell on drums. For those who don’t know, Joe plays keyboards and provides lead vocals. As Joe has gotten older, he now spends most of the evening seated at the keyboards. The show opened with up-tempo songs “One More Time” and “Fabulously Absolute”, and then moved to “Sunday Papers”. Up to this point, I was getting frustrated with a sound mix that was not featuring enough of Graham’s terrific bass lines. Drums and guitar were overpowering the keyboards and bass. Joe continued with newer tracks “Dave” and “Fool”, with “Look Sharp!” sandwiched between. “Fool” was from his 2019 release of the same name, and shows how Joe is still a master craftsman of quality song writing. The supporting band members then left the stage while Joe performed solo. This solo set included songs “Real Men” and “A Place In The Rain”, while also included a cover of a Walter Becker solo track “Junkie Girl” (Walter Becker was one of the founding members of Steeley Dan, and passed away in 2017). The band then returned to support Joe, and now the sound mix was much better too. The ending half of the evening included “You Can’t Get What You Want”, as well as a great almost acapella version of “Is She Really Going Out With Him?”. This was one moment where Joe showed an entirely new take on the hit single. Fantastic vocal harmonies were provided by the band, with just bass guitar and light percussion providing the instrumentation – you can find videos online of this. I’ll post one below from someone who recorded this. They ended the regular set with the up-tempo tune “I’m The Man”, which reminded the audience of Joe’s “angst driven” early years. Encores included “On Your Radio” and the evening ended with a slowed-down version of “Steppin Out”. Joe introduced it by saying he thought the studio version had a cheesy disco drum machine beat, and he never really like it – but this slower version is what he likes today. It was another example of Joe rearranging a track in a way you never expected, but seems to work. Below is video I shot of the slow version.

Overall, I was glad we made the trip. Although the first half of the evening was a little predictable, the second half was fantastic. And it always is a pleasure to see what surprises Joe has in store for us. If are a fan of piano-drive intelligent pop music, I highly recommend attending a Joe Jackson concert. Considering his first release was in 1979 (“Look Sharp!” which also has Graham Maby on bass) and he is now 67 years old, Joe is still very capable of entertaining a crowd.

Here is video I shot of “Steppin Out” slow version:

Here’s video from someone else who shot video of the “acapella version” of “Is She Really Going Out With Him?”. This is from a different concert about 1 week prior to Ann Arbor, and I don’t love the video being mostly on Joe, as the rest of the band is doing as much work on the song. But, since I didn’t do my own video, this will have to work:

Joe Jackson Setlist: