Koko Taylor may be the reigning Queen of the Blues, but Spaulding Auditorium certainly ain't the house of blues.
In a concert Thursday night, Taylor and her band, the Chicago-based Blues Machine, did their best with a venue and audience that weren't quite suited for the blues.
Taylor has been a force on the blues scene for more than 30 years and what, if anything, she lacks in youthful vitality, she more than makes up for with worldly experience.
The Blues Machine opened with two numbers before Taylor hit the stage, and their performance was a portent of things to come.
They started off with a fast-paced version of "Crosscut Saw," with rhythm guitarist Luke Strong on vocals. He sings well enough, but the song was closer to the Allman Brothers' blues-rock than to the real old-fashioned blues Taylor sings.
Lead guitarist Calvin "Vino" Louden followed up "Crosscut Saw" with an inspired raunchy, rambling blues tune, but his performance was marred by sound troubles -- much of his humorous monologue about his attempts to court a woman were lost in a bad sound system. Also, his guitar was turned down too low in the mix, so his solos were hard to hear.
Louden had to work a bit too hard to get the audience properly excited before he could introduce Taylor.
Although her first number was inconsistent, Taylor then went into "Mother Nature," from her new album "Force of Nature," and scored with a winning performance of the clever song.
Unfortunately, the evening then took a tragic turn when Taylor invited the audience to get up out of their seats and "boogie." The only possible explanation for her invitation is that she has never seen the general populace of Hanover dancing to blues music.
The front aisle of Spaulding quickly filled with people, though the distracting flailing of their bodies was mercifully cut short by the Hopkins Center staff.
The show really picked up when Taylor kicked into a high-energy "Hey Bartender," followed by the evening's highlight -- a slow, pulsing ballad called "I'd Rather Go Blind."
Next they played a reworked version of "Doctor, Doctor" (the one made famous by Robert Palmer and the Power Station, not the Thompson Twins version) which was a real crowd-pleaser.
Taylor introduced her band, which also included Anderson Edwards on keyboards, Melvin Smith on bass and Rick King on drums.
Another reworked classic, "Hound Dog," followed, and Taylor closed out her set with her 1965 hit "Wang Dang Doodle," followed by a gratuitous encore.
Taylor tends to belt out songs more than she sings them. Which is not necessarily a bad thing for blues vocals, but her set included too many loud, fast-paced songs where her voice was just another element in the mix.
She really shined on "I'd Rather Go Blind," when the band scaled back its playing and her voice took center stage.
But most of the night, her vocals were lost, along with Louden's excellent guitar work, in the too loud mix.
In addition to acoustic troubles, the spacious environment of Spaulding worked against the intimacy of Taylor's music.
And while they appreciated the music, the audience did not seem to understand some of the jokes -- for example, Taylor's reference to the lyrics of John Lee Hooker while introducing bandmembers.
The set was also short, considering the two opening numbers without Taylor, and the music-free period between the show and the encore.
Still, Taylor put on a strong show, and the audience was quite enthusiastic, if awkwardly so at times.
