Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew perform during Mill Valley Music Festival at Friends Field in Mill Valley, Calif. on May 14, 2023. Courtesy.

SAN FRANCISCO — With nearly a dozen musicians onstage, Talking Heads co-founder Jerry Harrison and guitar hero Adrian Belew‘s Remain in Light touring band got seriously groovy Saturday night at the Warfield. The musical masons erected a funky wall of sound with two drummers, bassist, three horn players, two backing singers, multi-instrumentalist–and Belew and Harrison. It was pretty much everything but a partridge in the pear tree.

While most of the night was dedicated to playing songs from The Talking Heads’ 1980 album, Remain in Light, the evening’s set began with the New York City art rockers’ first big hit, 1977’s “Psycho Killer.” While the song’s plodding bass line was instantly recognizable, Belew’s signature guitar pyrotechnics added some face-melting virtuosity to the performance. His vocals approximated Talking Heads frontman David Byrne’s iconoclastic delivery.

On “Crosseyed and Painless,” the band moved effortlessly between the angular strangeness of Belew’s guitar solos and spastic funk that got the large crowd moving. The band vamped on the ferocious groove as Belew, Harrison and the backup singers delivered the song’s haunting final verse, singing, “Still waiting, still waiting, still waiting.”

Musically, it was as if there were two clinics being taught simultaneously. While Belew’s virtuosic guitar playing involved flurries of notes along with wild, unpredictable bends of the his whammy bar, bassist Julie Slick (who’s played with everybody from The Police drummer Stewart Copeland to Alice Cooper and Heart’s Nancy Wilson) proved herself equally indispensable, meting out the most rudimentary low end bass riffs, often composed of single quarter notes. But the relentless simplicity anchored the musical complexity.

Belew’s involvement with the Talking Heads dates back to the band’s Remain in Light era, when the quartet began to experiment with more ambitious musical arrangements, inspired by African percussionist and groove master Fela Kuti. Jerry Harrison alternated between synthesizers and guitar during the 90-minute performance. Both men, dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts, looked more like dads at a car show than rock stars.

The band veered from the Remain in Light track list to include Harrison’s solo song “Rev It Up” (during which Belew stepped off stage for a break), and “Thela Hun Ginjeet,” from Belew’s band King Crimson, while Harrison took his own breather.

Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew perform during Mill Valley Music Festival at Friends Field in Mill Valley, Calif. on May 14, 2023. Courtesy.

The audience went wild, dancing up a storm, during hit “Life During Wartime” toward the end of the set. Many sang the song’s familiar chorus, “This ain’t no party/ This ain’t no disco/ This ain’t no fooling around,” and waved their fingers in emphatic denial. Harrison’s far-out synth solo during the song prompted one attendee to scream, “Get down, Jerry!”

Fans also sang along during a cover of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River,” which closed out the set. Belew and company signaled when they wanted the room to gradually grow quieter singing the song’s refrain, “Take me to the river/ Drop me in the water.”

Earlier in the evening, seminal Los Angeles rockers X delivered a powerful opening set. Vocalist Exene Cervenka and bassist John Doe offered up powerful harmonized vocals, while a mostly seated Billy Zoom delivered turbocharged Chuck-Berry-style lead guitar lines on classics like “Los Angeles” and “White Girl.” The vibe mellowed considerably for “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts,” from 1983 album More Fun in the New World, which the band flushed out with a vibraphone solo from drummer D.J. Bonebrake and a wailing saxophone solo by Zoom, who rose for the occasion.

The original version of this story misidentified Billy Zoom of X. We regret the error.