Roomful Of Blues; Rich Lataille, Phil Pemberton, Chris Vachon
Roomful Of Blues came back to life on the Boston City Winery stage last Saturday night. Playing some cuts from their latest album, In A Roomful Of Blues, as well as some other nuggets from their repertoire, Roomful offered many moments of the strong ensemble playing that has been their trademark for many years while opening up their material to let individual members shine.
The eight piece band opened with their well recognized horn swirls in an instrumental that set a lively vibe for the rest of the evening. Rich Lataille played his alto sax with warmth and richness. He then relied on his melodic intuition to open a space for bari sax man Alek Razdan and trumpet player Carl Gerhard before encompassing all of the warm vibrant colors coming from the horn section into one fun, wavy line.
Because the singer and the players are so talented and so rich in knowledge and technique, many of the best moments in their shows come during parts of their numbers when they just let their hair down and do their thing. Tight grooves. Rich horn lines. Biting guitar parts. Sophisticated piano tinkling. Those elements are the tasty bits. At one point, guitar man Chris Vachon and Roomful’s 50 years plus horn player Rich Lataille took turns playing solos over a movable groove, injecting colors with their pushy melodic lines that spearhead some of last Saturday night’s tunes. Their were moment when saxophonist Alek Razdan thickened the texture just right with his bari sax. In other moments trumpet player Carl Gerhard’s thick vibrant trumpet lines would breathe extra life into a number, making the audience feel a three dimensional power.
Every instrumentalist fits into place like a piece in a picture puzzle as Roomful demonstrated in their newly written song “Brand New Cadillac,” a number that found each player contributing something hefty to its strutting, strong groove: low end from bassist Big John Turner, left hand organ notes from Rusty Scott, Chris Vachon’s low guitar notes, and drummer Chris Rivelli’s jiving beat.
Roomful was scheduled last year to start touring to support In A Roomful Of Blues. What was to be their first tour date was the day every venue had to shut down due to the pandemic. So, the band is taking advantage of their current live dates to get that material exposed to their fans. “She Quit Me Again” let vocalist Phil Pemberton showcase how he can finesse every word with his combination of soft timbre and empowered range, taking the audience deeper into the emotive core, tugging on the listeners’ heartstrings as he unfurled this tale of sorrow and desperation. The song let the band show their cool interplay between singer and players as the musicians punctuated the singer’s delivered empathy, the horns drizzling more weepy emotion.
Chris Vachon’s low end guitar notes hinted at mischief while Phil Pemberton rocked his voice over the top of the groove in “She’s Too Much.” The horn section swaggered to the groove and Rusty Scott’s rich B3 swirls augmented the horn textures swelling over the beat. It was amazing to listen to this large ensemble locked into such a vibe. And again, the way Roomful builds and structures a song is key to their success as a live band.
Roomful horns; Carl Gerhard, Alek Razdan, Rich Lataille
In a number Phil Pemberton wrote for his wife, “You Move Me,” the vocalist applied his nimble technique and smoldering, soul-drenched voice as each player contributed to this force of nature song. The horns built up a motion filled wall of sound as Chris Vachon tossed in his snaky high guitar bits.
Their title track “In A Roomful Of Blues” found Chris Vachon’s ever present guitar ever rising in brightness, registering his lively feeling with carefully picked lines, lines that shone a midst a very danceable beat and funked up takes from each player. A cover of Doc Pomus’s “Too Much Boogie” adorns the new Roomful CD, and it’s a fun call and response number, showing a lot of energy between the Phil Pemberton smooth glide and speakeasy jive from the darting horns and the barroom piano tinkling.
Having become a huge hit single on Bluesville satellite radio, “Phone Zombies” had to be part of last Saturday night’s set list. Written by Chris Vachon, the song takes a few witty pokes at today’s common technological distraction. It is the most humorous blues song to come along in a while, and its vocal delivery from Phil Pemberton combine soulful vocals with the tune’s punchlines. Chris Vachon’s funky, sharp guitar phrasing is icing on the cake in this offering of sharp vocals, sprinting organ, hipster horns, and a rhythm section that knows how to lock down a toe tapping groove. It is so catchy that it won’t be a surprise to hear it in a film or TV show soundtrack.
In an instrumental sans Pemberton and the horn section, Chris Vachon, Rusty Scott, Big John Turner, and Chris Rivelli showed how tightly the inner core of the band can play. The edge coming from Vachon’s six string combined tones and techniques from oldies rock and roll, rockabilly, and especially blues. It all came out with a snappy flair until the guitarist went into a Jimi Hendrix kind of take on the blues guitar. Vachon eventually increased his commitment by pressing out a calmer but more colorful phrase. A second instrumental featured the horns and rhythm section sans Vachon and Pemberton. The players then kept the vibe bulbous and the talent splashing all over the place, playing music wild enough to jitterbug to. A guest player on soprano sax zig zagged his mellifluous line, reaching ever higher notes as he went along, creating a festive air in the venue as attendees were spellbound by the ebullient zeal.
A particularly fun up tempo number was “Boogie Woogie Country Girl” during which Rusty Scott spanked the ivories until they shone and shimmered like silver in sunlight. Scott’s boogie woogie piano playing tied the band, the audience, and the Boston City Winery venue into an earlier time in music, essentially turning the Boston venue into a Chicago speakeasy during prohibition, and it was another of the many ways that Roomful connects its listeners to great traditions in American music. It was also a treat for Roomful fans to see how Pemberton delivers this song independently of the version Dave Howard sang on the band’s 2008 Raison’ A Ruckus album.
For their encore, Roomful performed “She’s Too Much” with Chris Rivelli’s primitive jungle beat steering the ensemble through many uptempo feats. Phil Pemberton sang the action packed song with appropriate flair as the players injected their own touches here and there. Rich Lataille’s racing alto sax line had the frenzy of a runaway train and the rest of the horn section was swinging around the groove with plenty of jumpin’ jive.
It is difficult to find a highlight in a Roomful show as there are eight musicians giving it their all through complex arrangements. The important thing is this band with sophisticated knowledge of American music never fail to make it a fun night. Their performance at Boston’s City Winery last Saturday night showed this band ready to take on the international blues scene with their talent and their newer material.
