History teaches us that one event can incite, provoke, and or stimulate another. The Eve Rising pre-festival fundraiser show last Saturday night at The Tap in Haverhill, Massachusetts was one such event. It was held to promote a large Eve Rising festival coming on September 17, 2011. Last Saturday night’s pre-festival show in Haverhill indicates that the late summer event will be huge. Turnout was solid and response enthusiastic.
I arrived late and found Julie Dougherty finishing up her set with her original song “Remember Me” off of her last CD, 2004’s The Sweet Unraveling . As usual, Dougherty received refined bass support from her husband Woody Woodward, and she also had Erinn Brown singing “Remember Me’ with her as a duet. Brown was on the recording, so it was appropriate, and their voices had that unique blend that gets attention whenever the two women sing together.
Jen Kearney got up to sing and play her keyboard on several of her songs from her 2009 concept album The Year Of The Ox. Even without her backing band, The Lost Onion, Kearney can still turn up the voltage. Her electric piano tinkling was bubbly with melody, rising up clean and wide, supported by her own low end lift. Kearney was all class as usual.
Kearney and her music are impossible to pigeonhole into any one category of music. Her genre is definitely somewhat of a cousin to R&B, but she has such a strong voice for ballads and her grooves and rhythms belong to the funk family. She definitely does not sound like any other contemporary music artist. Her tune “Abandoned” showcased her rich, heavy timbre, a voice full of soul and depth. She can also move her voice up and down the scale without losing that precious thickness. Her range just rides up high, stays there for a while, then comes back down, never losing anything in the process.
That Kearney can keep these songs so solid with just keyboard and or acoustic guitar supporting her vocal phrases tells you a lot about her strength of personality, her abilities, and her stage presence. Her timbre, with little or no effort, spreads wide, letting her high notes ring out with purpose.
Next up was the Erinn Brown Trio. Brown played lead and rhythm on her electric. Alison “AKAK” Keslow played bass guitar. Steve Peabody played drums. Brown announced that Peabody wanted to play “In The End” from her 2008 release Peace Of The World because “it’s the end of the world.” Brown rocked out so well on electric, I didn’t miss her lead guitar player like I used to when I last saw her in her trio format. The Erinn Brown Trio ended “In The End” with a tight, quick, solid finish that impressed all, judging by the hushed silence which ensued.
Brown’s “Time To Waste” showed her to be a smart, honest singer-songwriter, reflecting on having too much time on her hands and her feelings about political correctness. Peabody and AKAK Keslow put a palpable, groovy vibe underneath her, pushing Brown to a higher level of excellence. Brown’s vocal sustains were filled with soulful exuberance and she made you feel it.
There was definitely more snap in Brown’s note picking. She played her guitar with more emotional proficiency in the affecting, opening notes on “Love Is A Piece Of The World.”
Keslow was featured prominently on Brown’s tune “Dig Out The Pain.” Keslow’s low end was more like a lead instrument than a supportive foundation. With its own unique rangy, bumpity-bumpity-bumpity, her bass had a voice of its own, a roll of knobbiness that asserted itself while finessing and controlling the song. And again, the playing forced Brown to step up her game, and she sang with her voice towering, her vocal notes rising, and rising, and rising.
The Elle Gallo Band came on last as Gallo was the headliner as well as the event’s organizer. Gallo started her set in a duo format with renowned New England keyboardist Brian Maes. Her voice, with only keys underneath, was crystal clear and her timbre rode beautifully over the melody. It certainly helped to have a master keyboardist extending the emotionality of the music, but Gallo was simply in good form. She put punchy spikes in her vocal melody before simmering down, controlling her music, keeping it in a place she needed it to be to reach her audience.
Gallo really heated things up when her band mates joined her and Maes on stage to close out her set with an authoritative stomp of blues-rock mania that made people dance in their chairs. Gallo’s “Sweet Addiction” was beefy and sweeping, driven home by her raspy, R&B drenched vocal, her strength anchoring the whole thing.
Guitarist Ross Hahn applied, in many instances, his ever so sensitive fingertips to press out sweet melodies in his phrases. His wild guitar solo in other places were a force of nature. Gallo eventually called tenor saxophone player John Aruda up to do some rockin’ stuff on her upcoming song “Paradise,” a tune that found every instrument in top form.
I missed the first two acts. But Laura Vecchione and the duo of Lori Diamond and Fred Abatelli must have gone over well because people were still talking about them.
This Eve Rising precursor drew a crowd and kept it focused all night long,. The upcoming Eve Rising event in September promises to be something special.
