Hank's Cadillac

Hank’s Cadillac brought the 2015 season of summer concerts in Pastorius Park to a warm but delightful close Wednesday evening, July 29. The band’s performance was heard by an audience that filled the natural amphitheater. The series – at 67 years and counting – is the longest set of free concerts in the region. Sponsored by the Chestnut Hill Community Association and Chestnut Hill Hospital, this year’s installment presented seven concerts, only two of which were moved indoors due to inclement weather.

Chestnut Hill vocalist and songwriter Kim Alexander named her band Hank’s Cadillac after the legendary car in which Hank Williams died of heart failure in 1953. When I was growing up as a kid in the 1950s, the triple personifications of beauty, glamour and luxury were actresses Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe and General Motors’ top-of-the-line Cadillac. So one would be correct to suspect that I was pre-ordained to enjoy the closing concert in this year’s Pastorius Park season.

Alexander and her bandmates Scott Rodgers on guitar, bass and vocals, Michael Salsburg on fiddle, Mike Hood on upright bass, Mike Kennedy on rhythm guitar and pedal steel guitar, and Glenn Cowen on drums performed an appealing mix of country, rock and jazz. Even in slower-tempo songs, the band’s engagingly upbeat style kept the mood light and energetic. In songs such as “Blue Kentucky Sky, “Tracks,” “Hey, Good Lookin’” and “Cowboy’s Sweetheart,” Alexander and Rodgers sang with breezy projection, eloquent phrasing and superb blend and balance. They were accompanied with stylish panache. - Chestnut Hill Local