Jon Batiste Delivers a Good but Messy Performance on "Austin City Limits"

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2023 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

After that PBS showed an Austin City Limits episode featuring Jon Batiste, the former musical director for Stephen Cplbert’s late-night show before he made a quite successful album of his own that won Album of the Year at the last Grammy Awards. I loved Jon Batiste not only musically but physically – he’s drop-dead gorgeous and easily made my list of “Straight Guys I Wish Were Gay” – but on this show I thought he was trying too hard to be both a musical icon and a sex god. Batiste performed the first half of his show in a red outfit with an open jacket that flashed his bare chest, and the second half (after making the change in the middle of a song!) ini a cowboy hat and a striped suit. It was as if he decided to perform the first half as James Brown and the second as Cab Calloway. Batiste announced at the start of the snow, and againi about two-thirds in, that he considered it not just a musical performance but a spiritual experience, presumably both for himself and his congregation – and I use that word instead of “audience” because he really was trying to get the spectators to participate. As I noted in my entry on The Motet’s televised performance on Live at the Belly Up, that sort of thing can be really exciting “live” but pales mightily quickly on TV. I also missed the helpful chyrons we get on Live at the Belly Up that give you the titles of the songs the band is playing; without that help, I had a hard time guessing some of them even though a few were obvious.

Batiste opened in soul vein with a song that appeared to be called “We Are the Chosen Ones” (one thing no one has ever accused Batiste of is modesty!), and his next song was similar in style and appeared to be called “I Just Need You.” Then Batiste brought on a New Orleans-style brass band (well, he is from there, after all) for a long instrumental introduction to a song apparently called “We’re Never Alone.” After another song with the brass band, “I Feel Good Today,” Batiste then did a rap number called :You Can Still See Me Ballin’” (“ballin’” as in “having a good time,” not “having sex” – in 1953 the great New Orleans singer-pianist-composer Professor Longhair, born Henry Roeland Byrd, did a song called “Ball the Wall” which sounds considerably kinkier than it is). At least I gave Batiste credit for carefully enunciating the words of his rap so you could at least understand what he was saying; as I’ve said about rap before, if y ou’re going to reduce music to just rhythm and lyrics, you should at least give us a fighting chance to comprehend the lyrics! Then Batiste did one of the best numbers of his set, a cover of Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me” (Withers was one of those amazingly talented musical artists who didn’t have the kind of superstar career he deserved, and in his case it seems as if at least parts of the problem were the quirks in his personality) that slowed down the original song, made it more lyrical, but kept the heartfelt nature of Withers’ version. Then, alas, he did a second rap number with the all too appropriate title “I Don’t Even Know What You’re Talking About.” For that one Batiste adopted the typical rap mumble so that it was true: I didn’t know what he was talking about.

Then Batiste did a gospel-soul raveup called “Tell the Truth,” after which he went into a long dance jam called “Eve3rybody Get Lowdown, Everybody Jump.” The title expressed the two directions in which Batiste wanted his congregants to move, and it was in the middle of this song that Batiste sneaked off the stage and came out again in a different outfit. When he returned he sat at the piano for an intriguing medley consisting of Chopin’s “Minute” waltz and the companion piece, the Waltz in C-sharp minor, the familiar song “Chopsticls,” Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” and a couple of other pieces I didn’t recognize, which Batiste played first more or less as written and then in a jazz context. I still think Batiste is a great jazz pianist and wish he’d done a Thelonious Monk tribute album in 2018. the centenary of Monk’s birth. But at the same time it’s hard for me to take seriously any jazz version of “Chopsticks” that isn’t the brilliant “Blue Chopsticks” by the tragically forgotten and neglected jazz pianist Herbie Nichols, recorded for Blue Note in 1956. AFter he finished the piano medley Batiste gave us one of the most powerful songs of the night, “All I Want to Do Is Cry,” with guest artist Gary Clark, Jr. supplying some beautiiul blues guitar. Ten Batiste did a song called “Freedom” that appeared to have a subtitle, “Can I See You Waddle?,” after the motions Batiste was not only making himself but wanted his audience to duplicate.

After another soul raveup, “I Need You (Yeah Yeah),” Batiste closed the show with a quiet, reflective song called “Don’t Stop Dreaming” that was just his voice and piano, a level of simplicity much of the rest of the performance could have used. Jon Batiste is one of those marvelous but also frustrating performers who precisely because he can do so much – he can play piano, guitar, saxophone and that weird toy keyboard Nat “King” Cole (another African-American musician who gave up jazz piano to become a popular singing star) also used with equal facility, but a lot of people who can do so many things have trouble settling down into a single groove, and I think Batiste feels compelled to show off his virtuosity rather than to movie us with his emotions.