Anyone that knows me or regularly listens to my radio show will know that I have a certain affinity with this artist.  I’m fairly sure that if I listened to every “Soul Kitchen” I ever recorded there wouldn’t be one which didn’t feature a Dwele record and I have actually lost count of the amount of times I have seen Dwele perform live so I’ll hedge my bets at 6 - all but one at the Jazz Café.

I’m not sure why I love this venue so much.  Maybe it’s the size of the room or its acoustics.  Maybe it’s the fact that there is never a big fuss to get in, or that the people that attend this place tend to be likeminded positive music lovers who smile and apologise if they so much as cross your eye line.  I would probably say it’s a sum of al these parts.  Even if you look at the things that are wrong with the place they all add up to provide very special nights of live music.

This night was no different.   Beginning with a subtle introduction Dwele and the band approached this one with a different feeling to other gigs I’d been to.  Dividing himself into 3 personalities to reflect his three albums to date.  Starting with the shy and reserved “Dwele G” (this being his performing name for his first limited release album “Rize”) he donned a backpack and went through his early material.  The highlight of which was “Down Jimmy” which I still think is one of his best tracks, I just wonder how many people have had a good hard listen to this track and understood it properly.  One day I may ask him if his inspiration was in fact personal experience.

We were then blessed with much of the material from “Subject” and “Some Kinda”, the man changing persona with each album to the delight of everyone in the room.  One thing I have always been impressed with is how much Dwele involves his band.  This is the first time I’ve seen the line up unchanged from the previous gig which suggests they are settled and have a good understanding.  Treating us to some very impressive solos with the most important man in the room seemingly happy to stand back and admire the instrumentals with us. 

There is never a feel that he is rushing through tunes to get on the first plane back to Detroit.  He takes time to interact with people, perform tunes he never planned to, puts a slant on his records that you could only hear live and clearly holds a lot of important on creating a complete live music ‘event’ rather than a load of tunes performed with a band. 

At the last gig at “Neighbourhood” a keys player called “Oscar” had played with the warm-up act “Floetic Lara”.  Now as the headline acts were split between Dwele and Jaguar Wright, Dwele came with a smaller band than usual and was playing the Fender Rhodes himself.  It became evident that the crowd wanted him to stand and perform on the lead microphone, which is where Oscar stepped up, lending his talents to Dwele and the band, a pretty amazing sight.   Now I dabbled with keys myself and to see someone just jump to the stage and play like he’d been a feature of the group from day one is a remarkable thing to see for the average man – very “Live with Jools Holland” I’d say. 

Oscar was in the crowd this time and when recognised by Dwele was called up for his very own solo.  The crowd lost their minds when the two keyboard players battled it out and was all just another example of how his performances are just that little bit different from anything else out there.

One question I would like answered is why we never hear any of the unreleased or ditched studio stuff at his live events.  I would confidently say I have as much unreleased Dwele material as I have stuff bought from the shelf, and I know many people know all this stuff, so why not slip it in?  We never hear a mention of it.  If you listen to “Beep Me Find Me” you’ll hear it’s clearly Dwele but under than banner of Johnsmyname – suggesting Dwele’s fictional son John had recorded this but as we know the clever use of vocoders and audio filters give it that distinct sound.  Again, we hear nothing of this when we turn up to see him.

There is clearly a reason I consistently attend his live gigs, and this goes hand in hand with the amount of his music I play on my radio show.  After racking my brain for so long pondering why I believe Dwele has this slight edge over every other artist in neo-soul I came up with a big list.  I’ll condense it for you here.  Is it the truly amazing live performances?  Was it that feeling I had when I first heard a promo of “Find A Way”?  Is it the fact that the man is so humble in his greatness as a singer / songwriter?  I would probably settle on “all of the above” and jus t say that like a growing number of people around the world – I am a big Dwele fan.

V