John Oates is one-half of what is generally recognized as the most sucessful duo in music history. I attended each of his two shows this past Friday evening at the Dakota in downtown Minneapolis, a return engagement following the two shows he performed there in November 2023. Last time around he performed acoustic sets accompanying himself on guitar backed by John Michel on percussion and Nathaniel Smith on cello. This time around he was backed by his (electric) Good Road Band with drummer John Michel, keyboardist Kevin McKendry, lead guitarist Seth Cook, and bassist/musical director Marc Rogers.
Oates will turn 78 next month. When he came out for his second set Friday night, he commented that he hadn’t played two sets in a long time. I’m guessing I was there the last time he did. His stamina, his playing, his voice, his creativity are unflagging. I thought it was a thrill and a privilege to see him in such an intimate venue. I snapped the photo at the right from our table in front of him during the second show.
He appeared last night at the Genesee Theater in Waukegan. The Genesee seats 2,400, roughly comparable to the Orpheum and State theaters in Minneapolis. Oates previewed the show in an interview that is posted online here.
At the first show we sat next to Mandy Millar. Mandy is a Brit who has moved to Dublin. She first saw Oates play 50 years ago and developed a friendly relationship with him since then. She flew in from Dublin for his shows at the Dakota — she was also there for the 3:00 p.m. sound check — and took the midnight bus to Chicago after the second show to see him in Waukegan last night before flying back to Dublin. She had a lot of good things to say about him as a person. It supplemented what I learned about him from Change of Seasons, the memoir he wrote with former Power Line reader Chris Epting.
I thought Oates’s 2023 show provided something of a short course in American popular music with an emphasis on blues. I wrote it up in “Whole Oatees.” His current show provides a short coures in the music that formed him as a singer, songwriter, and musician. Piecing together videos that are posted on YouTube, I want to draw from his current setlist to give a sense of his show. He opened with the Hall and Oates number “Out of Touch.”
He followed with his own “Pushin’ a Rock.” He says it’s a song he “wrote for anyone who feels like life keeps knocking him back down. It is about getting up one more time, keeping your head high, leaning on others, and choosing to roll with it instead of giving up. The version below was recorded live at the Troubadour in West Hollywood with his Good Road Band.
Like “Pushin’ a Rock,” most of the songs he played from his solo catalog had a spiritual component. He wrote “Mending” in Nashville with Devin Gilfillian. Gilfillian appears with him in the video below.
I would put “Reunion” in the same spiritual category. His comments during the show implied that he had his father in mind when he wrote this. His father died at the age of 101 in 2024. He told People last year: “My dad, he was the inspiration for the song ‘Reunion,’ He said he was going to be reuniting with mom who had passed away before.”
“Please Send Me Someone to Love” is an old Percy Mayfield song that he included among the songs that formed him.
“Why Can’t We Live Together” was a hit for Timmy Thomas in 1972. I think it also falls among the songs in that category.
Oates played “Maneater” from the Hall and Oates catalog. He said he wrote it with a reggae influence upon his return from a vacation in Jamaica. In performance he has restored it to his original idea. I never liked the Hall and Oates record. This is something else (and the sound is excellent).
“Showdown” is the old Electric Light Orchestra song by Jeff Lynne. Oates learned it when he was invited to play at a show paying tribute to the band. I enjoyed Oates’s cover more than the original. I wish the sound in the video below were better, but it gives you some idea what it sounds like with the Good Road Band.
Hall and Oates inducted Smokey Robinson into the Rock Hall of Fame in 1987. Smokey is one of his musical heroes. The April 2025 video below is cued to begin with “Ooh Baby Baby” and “Tracks of My Tears,” both of which he played on Friday night. I thought Oates’s performance of “Ooh Baby Baby” was an emotional highlight of his set. “Mistakes, I know I’ve made a few.”
Oates said he aspired to write songs that would stand the test of time. He seems to have done it with “She’s Gone,” a song he says he has played in every show since Hall and Oates recorded it. When Atlantic first released “She’s Gone” as a single from Abandoned Lunchonette in 1974, Minneapolis’s cool old KQRS put it in its rotation and made it a regional hit. The Hall and Oates recording didn’t become a national hit until Atlantic re-released it in 1976. He performs it in the video below with the Good Road Band. I’m sorry the sound is wanting).
You had to be there for the second show on Friday night to hear Oates play his version of Chuck Berry’s “Let It Rock” as his encore.
