Wednesday, July 14, 2010

GAT + Dead Kenny G's @ Bowery Ballroom 7/7/10

I couldn't ask for a better band to welcome me home after a wonderful vacation. I got there at about 9:40, in time for the last 20 min of The Dead Kenny G's. That was great, fun, and a good choice to precede the phenomenal Garage a Trois. It consists of Skerik on sax and keyboard, Mike Dillon on drums and percussion and Brad Houser on bass and baritone sax. They ended with a GAT-ish piece and when Mike D had to leave the kit for vibe duty in the middle, Stanton jumped on and helped them finish the set. Therefor, I got my special guest wish. Although, in non-jazzfest settings, I'm content without them sitting in on each others projects when they have multiple projects playing in an evening. I love it when they open for each other. It makes perfect sense to me and is leagues better than a lot of possible alternatives.

Every Garage a Trois show seems to be my favorite. I think they keep naturally building off of everything that's come before. this show's MVP goes to Marco Benevento. At one point Mike directed people to stretch. It appeared he needed a physical stretch. However, I think that stretch expanded into the music.

The long set, about 1.5 hours, had everything for me. It got raucus, it got quiet and more experimental, there were lots of great solos, lots of great meshing together, and of course, lots of fun to dance to.

Ah, it's nice to be back.

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