Lonnie Holley & Mourning [A] BLKstar 1/18/24 Whitney Humanities Center at Yale

 Some shows are difficult to describe. The spiritual feelings I experienced while sitting in the audience for this event will not be accurately scribed. I can give you the facts and let your imagination conjure the feelings. Let’s start with the venue, WHC is just one of many hallowed halls attached to Yale. An unassuming entrance on Wall Street led to a beautiful auditorium where a hundred or so patrons were treated to this awesome show. M[A]B is an experimental collective of artists and storytellers formed in Cleveland that are self-proclaimed avant poets  who fuse beat making and classic instrumentation to weave afrofuturist tales. An eight person gender fluid multiracial outfit, trumpet, percussion, bass, drums, trombone, multiple vocalists, and a beatmaster on laptop and electronics laid the framework for Holley to work. Lee Bains, guitarist and former student of Holley, gave an added dimension to M[A]B and lent a stage familiarity that was palpable. I will plagiarize the playbill to describe Holley. “Born in Jim Crow-era Birmingham Alabama in 1950, Lonnie Holley was the seventh of 27 children and at the age of four was taken from his mother and traded for a bottle of whiskey. He fled abusive foster parents, was hit by a car ( and declared brain dead) and was later sent to the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children (essentially a slave camp).” Hardship, struggle, and furious curiosity fuel the art, visual and performance, from this amazing man. The introduction was given by Holley’s friend and promoter Matt Arnett, son of TV comedian Will. Arnett explained that a Holley performance is completely improvised. An index card with notes and phrases guides the proceeding for Holley and the musicians rendering no two performances the same. On this evening, the concepts of time, education, environmental justice, and freedom allowed Holley to riff. The music moved from gospel to hiphop to afrobeat and was completely engaging. Holley enjoyed word play and had fun with Yale which rhymes with jail and sounds like yell. At one point, when riffing on social justice, Holley intoned “nothing I write, can make it right”, I feel that, nothing I write can describe it right. Props to CCAM (Yale’s Center for Collaborative Arts and Media) a well-connected student group that arranged the performance.

Ghost-note 1/16/24 New Park Brewing West Hartford

 Ghost-note is a jam-jazz-funk collective helmed by two drummers that also do time in the downtown modern jazz big band Snarky Puppy. Drummer Robert “Sput”  Searight and percussionist Nate Werth were joined by two saxes, keys, guitar, bass, and singer. The octet was tight and it was nice to see a group with emphasis placed on drums. Searight was active and was a delicious smash of   ?uestlove and Art Blakey. The music was loose jams that drew on Tower of Power, James Brown, and Sly Stone. I’ve seen this crew at a Newport Jazz and they seem to have evolved over time. The singer didn’t do much singing but his yelping “Ha” and “Good Gawds” lent some vocal percussion. They keys player offered some spacey passages that made me reminisce of Bernie Worrell of the Mothership. First time at this brewery whose product appears nowhere except at this address. They have a taproom and the concert happened in another space called the “green room”. The saxes played off of each other with one’s sound processed through some synth. The guitar and bass were a solid backbone and could be in front or back of the sound. Great cover of The Isley’s Work To Do.

Paul Simon Tribute 1/12/24 Park City Music Hall Bridgeport

 First time at the revamped Acoustic Cafe now called PCMH. Local bon vivant John Torres put glass garage doors, revamped the stage, bar, and sound system to capitalize on the hipster enclave known as the Black Rock section. Torres’ son fronted this incarnation of Simon homage with two jam packed sets. The setlist took a loose arc of Simon’s storied career. Great versions of Me and Julio, Slip Slidin’ Away, Kodachrome, Cecilia, 50 Ways to Leave Your lover, Hearts and Bones, Mother and Child Reunion, One Trick Pony, and a personal fave The Only Living Boy in NY. Closed the set with a rousing Late In The Evening. Like the Beatles or the Stones, many people seem to have an innate affiliation with the Simon catalog, belting out lyrics to most of the songs. The band was expansive with Torres on vocals/guitar, female singer, organ, guitar, bass, percussion, drums, with occasional horns creating a full sound.  Torres explained that the songs sound simple but are challenging to play, and not just when they move into world music territory. The median age of this band was probably 30, which puts them squarely in diapers when the tail end of this material was even recorded. How then did the project come to be? I imagine sitting around a coffeehouse with one musician saying “you gotta check out Paul Simon, dude is amazing on all fronts”. Second set focused on  the Graceland era of Simon’s success. The Boy in the Bubble, Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes, I Know What I Know, Graceland, Crazy Love Vol. II were all expertly delivered. There was an excellent deep cut Can’t Run But from the widely under-appreciated Rhythm of The Saints record with some righteous conga work. Closed with a great version You Can Call Me Al. The beauty of this kind of tribute is the wide appeal of the music and the multi-generational allure to view and play it.