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SAN FRANCISCO — Monday afternoon, Van Morrison sang about playing in the “low-class joints” and in the “high-class joints,” as part of a 75-minute launch party celebration of his newest album. Somebody Tried To Sell Me A Bridge, released at the end of January, is his 48th album, if you’re still counting after all these years.
Monday’s exclusive and intimate concert may have been, in a sense, a warmup gig for a seven-night residency at the Palace of Fine Arts, which begins on Feb. 17. That is certainly a “high-class joint,” a reference from the new song “Play the Honky Tonks.” But The Chapel, where Morrison and his five-member band (plus two backup singers) played, isn’t lacking in distinction, either, in a more intimate, immediate way.
Somebody Tried To Sell Me A Bridge is a blues album, but it’s decidedly a Van Morrison blues album. So while there were moments of loud, gritty “gutbucket” blues (notably covers of Willie Dixon’s “I’m Ready” and B.B. King’s “Rock Me Baby”), Van the Man’s blues are usually a more slippery, slinky, sneak-attack thing – a bit jazzier, though no less emotional…