Chris Cornell almost joined Mike McCready’s old band & more from Shadow’s reunion

 

Mike McCready’s old band Shadow — which also includes Rick Friel , Chris Friel and  Danny Newcombe — reunited at the Tractor Tavern last night as part of a benefit concert for Carbon Roots International. Here are a few quick notes from the show:

• One of the walls of the Tractor was covered with a massive red and black Shadow banner that had to be at least 15’x30.’ I’m guessing it’s from the band’s Los Angeles days. Mike later said the banner hadn’t seen the light of day for 28 years.

• Mike opened the show with a brief solo acoustic set. He covered a TKO song and Neil Young’s “Too Far Gone” (videos here). He was also joined by Duff McKagan and Star Anna. Duff led the crowd in a singalong to “Patience” and later he and Star joined Mike for “Wild Horses” which became another massive singalong.

• What’s Shadow sound like? Well, they sound nothing like Pearl Jam. It’s 1980s glam metal and it sounded great at the Tractor. Think Twisted Sister & KISS and you’ll get the idea. I tweeted a few sound samples of Mike’s guitar parts (no visuals) which you can hear over here and here.

• It seems like just about every grunge anecdote has been told with all of the nostalgia for ’91 that has been happening this year but Mike managed to share quite an interesting story that I don’t think I’ve read anywhere else. He said that when Shadow was looking for a singer a small guy in an army jacket auditioned. Apparently Mike didn’t like the way the audition went so he and the rest of the band decided against going with the army jacket guy. That guy ended up being Chris Cornell. Chris and Mike didn’t know each other at the time of the audition. When Chris formally met Mike as a member of Pearl Jam he would later say to him “I was sort of worried about you because you were one of those Shadow guys.”

• The show ended with back-to-back covers of KISS’ “Come on and Love Me” and Cheap Trick’s “Stiff Competition” with a side of Van Halen’s “Eruption,” which was done by Mike, thrown in to spice things up a bit. For the KISS cover  the band called out all of their friends from Shadow’s heyday to come on stage and join them for a singalong. There were at least 40 folks on stage with the band. The group singalong made the show feel equal parts celebration and reunion.