Keith Richards.
Photo: Getty Images, Rich Fury. All rights reserved.
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In 1986, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards assembled his own band, The X-Pensive Winos, intended as a backing band for his appearance in the Chuck Berry concert film Hail! Hello! rock’n’roll”. But it went so smoothly that he continued to work with these musicians years later.
The X-Pensive Winos – guitarist Waddy Wachtel, keyboardist Ivan Neville, bassist Charlie Drayton, saxophonist Bobby Keys, drummer Steve Jordan – also supported Richards on his solo albums Talk Is Cheap and Main Offender and toured with him for a while; Jordan is now also replacing the late Charlie Watts on the Stones stage. On Thursday, Richards performed for the first time in a long time with the X-Pensive Winos at the Love Rocks benefit show at New York’s Beacon Theatre.
The Love Rocks Show was an all-star show, featuring the likes of Mavis Staples, Warren Haynes, Melissa Etheridge and Hozier, but Richards was the main attraction of the night.
Richards has not toured with the X-Pensive Winos since the early 1990s. The band last supported Richards on his 2015 solo album Crosseyed Heart, and they played a show with him at the Apollo Theater in Harlem that year (sans Charlie Drayton, and without Bobby Keys, who died in 2014). Richards instead announced former Letterman house band bassist Will Lee as “honorary Wino.”
At the show, Richards and the X-Pensive Winos performed a 16-minute, three-song set with Richards singing throughout. They performed “999,” one of the songs from Richards’ 1992 solo album Main Offender, and they also covered “You Got The Silver” and “Before They Make Me Run,” two of the Rolling Stones classics on which Richards performed as lead singer. Here you can see the performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKfzK4IYJ00
During his set, Keith Richards mentioned the “Main Offender” album and pointed out that it “coincidentally gets re-released this week or so.” Because next week a deluxe box set reissue of “Main Offender” will be released. Here’s one of the unreleased tracks, a live version of the legendary Stones anthem “Gimme Shelter” that Richards performed with the Winos in London in 1992:
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