I noticed early on last night that Otis Taylor wasn’t providing as forceful vocals as he had when I saw him a year ago. I thought he was going for a new vibe, but it turned out he was just sick. It didn’t stop him from doing his thing, though, which is putting on about as fun a show as you can catch right now, at least if you’re into audience engagement and the [excuse the overused genre descriptor] trance-blues.

Taylor’s new album features a full band, and for this tour, he’s got a bassist and guitarist with him, who play on about 3/4 of the numbers. He played surprisingly little off Below the Fold, maybe because of the difficulty of re-imagining some of those tracks in a smaller setting (but come one, “Feel the Lightning” — please!). He also repeated much of his material from last year, including the “hambone” audience participation song and, much to my pleasure, “Please Come Home Before it Rains.”

It didn’t matter. Taylor is a fascinating entertainer, charming between songs and intense during them. His repetitive riffs build to great effect, often released last night by lead guitarist Jack Hadley’s work.

Taylor appears to enjoy indulging requests, playing his saddest song last night, one about a woman named Martha going to gather the body of her lynched and dismembered husband. Later he tried a requested mandolin-based song that neither of his bandmates had ever played in public before (and one of them had never heard it). After a couple false starts, they got a groove going, and Taylor asked if the woman who requested it was still here and if she was into it. She replied, “Don’t you do this on banjo?”, which broke up the audience and prompted an amused Taylor to announce that he was just going to do what he wanted to do.

As we were leaving the concert, I told my wife that I was disappointed he didn’t play longer, and wondered if it was because he was sick. She pointed out that he played for an hour and a half. That’s to Taylor’s credit that he played a full set despite a cough, stuffy nose, and fever, but to my dismay that 90 minutes isn’t enough for me.