Uli Roth, Jennifer Batten & Andy Timmons Concert Review, San Antonio, TX, March 5, 2016

Uli! Still one of the best alive. I had bought the meet and greet pass a few weeks ago mainly to get Jennifer Batten in The Book. I’ve met Uli in the past and had him sign it in 2004. Great guy. I got lucky that Batten was out on the patio for a few minutes prior to the show and graciously signed the book. “What’s this?” I explained it a bit and showed her the band that she was in. “Whoa. That was a short-lived time in that band.” After that I was able to put the book back in my car and not have to lug it around for the night. Sweet! I gave my pass to a buddy.

Prior to Andy Timmons’ set, David Klosinki from Uli’s band got up and played one song, likely from his solo album. It was a shredder. That guy is a pure bad ass.

Andy got on stage and played over backing tracks. It was my first time seeing him and he’s pretty good although not anyone I’d really like to see again.

Jennifer came on playing to backing tracks as well with choreographed video. In case you didn’t know, she toured with Michael Jackson for years and did a few years with Jeff Beck. Her set was enjoyable. She’s obviously a good player. She did one song called Cat Fight and prior to playing it pretty much stated that she was a crazy cat lady. haha.

Uli hits the stage with a bigger band than last time as he’s added a third guitarist. Unnecessary in my opinion, but whatever. They opened up with Scorpions’ All Night Long and Sails of Charon. The set consisted mostly of classic Scorpions and 2 from his solo work. We left as the encore was starting. It was all Hendrix stuff and apparently they did an instrumental version of Gary Moore’s Still Got the Blues. For a set that only consisted of 12 songs, it ran almost 2 hours.

His band was fantastic and John West’s vocals were outstanding. The third guitarist provided some great backing vocals and sang lead on Fly to the Rainbow.

The sound sucked for Uli, though. Korova doesn’t have great sound to start with but Uli’s personal sound guy didn’t help things. Everything was far too loud for that room. The only time it sounded good was when I went close to the front.

The only other issue was with ticketing. Why offer digital tickets if they’re not accepted at the door? Even when the door guy has the list of everyone who bought a ticket. I was directed to go across the street to the hotel and print it out. It caused a lot of problems. I’ll know better for that venue.

Anyway, I bought an Uli Earthquake shirt and the Scorpions Revisited CD and they gave me an Uli Roth record bag. Anyone want it? The actual Uli tour shirt looked horrible although it had tour dates on it.