Bobby Womack’s comeback has been dogged by ill health. A bout of colon cancer forced him to withdraw from a triple headliner date with Tom Jones and Van Morrison at Marlay Park in 2012; there have since been rumours that he may be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.
All of which added a poignant gloss to this comeback show, ostensibly to promote last year’s Damon Albarn-produced Bravest Man In The World album. Perhaps sensing that the sun is about to set on his career, Womack seems more interested in celebrating the past than acknowledging the present and while several of Bravest Man’s standouts receive an airing, the primary note is nostalgia.
Flanked by a sterling funk band, daughter Gina part of the trio of backing vocalists, Womack wears a quicksilver coloured suit and moves with a slinkiness that belies his 69 years. Whatever other horrors the ravages of time have inflicted, they certainly haven’t affected his remarkable voice, a soulful, ragged croon, full of yearning and pathos. He sang his 1972 blaxploitation anthem ‘110th Street’ with a remarkable rawness, swaying his head from side to side as though wrestling demons.
Womack’s a cracking raconteur too, joshing freely with an audience clearly up for a party. This belies the darkness of some of his songs, most notably the wrenching heroin dirge ‘Nobody Wants You When You’re Down And Out’. He throws in some memorable covers too, turning Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna To Come’ into a rolling jam and imbuing ‘California Dreamin’’ with a sweltering street vibe. It’s just one of several extraordinary moments in a concert that would give goosebumps to a marble bust.