Sweetwater Begins Its Second Act as a Group

The Los Angeles band Sweetwater is the beneficiary of twice-removed nostalgia. Thirty years ago, the septet was little more than a footnote in rock, known mainly for being the opening act for the original Woodstock. After a near-fatal car accident derailed the singing career of front-woman Nancy Nevins, Sweetwater broke up for nearly three decades before reemerging in 1995. Fast-forward to 1999, when VH1 turns Sweetwater’s hard-luck tale into a tabloid-tawdry TV movie that becomes one of the highest-rated shows in the network’s history.

Thus, the sparse crowd that attended Sweetwater’s show at the House of Blues on Monday bore witness to a band most of them had never actually seen before, playing songs that they knew via lip-sync versions from the film. It was a tad surreal--a reunion band connecting with a crowd not because the songs provided the formative anthems of their youth, but because they heard them on TV.

The show itself was the perfect denouement to the VH1 film--a final act of redemption after years of obscurity. Unfortunately, the band’s tepid folk-rock--a Day-Glo swirl of Jefferson Airplane, It’s a Beautiful Day and other ‘60s bands--was less inspiring than the group’s saga. Sweetwater may be writing its own second act, but it’s working with cliched material.