Brian Slattery Photo
Baker celebrates new release with a Cafe Nine show Friday.
Like so many great songs, “Matchbox Blues,” the opening cut on the new album A Night to Remember, starts with a single snare hit. But from the first chord New Haven guitar hero George Baker plays one bar later, it’s clear who’s driving the bus.
Baker’s guitar sound, a clean, clear core of tone with just enough grit at the edges to keep things interesting, is out in front, right where it should be. The rest of the band falls in behind him with a deep and easy swing. Baker’s voice, an instrument all its own, glides through the first verse, relaxed and youthful, alive and sparkling.
As the band works through its solos, effectively introducing every member — Willie Joe Moore on bass, Derrick Tappin on drums, Lou Ianello on sax, Tony Dioguardi on guitar, and Nick Lloyd on keys — the band sounds more relaxed with each passing second. And then there’s the applause at the end, the clapping and cheers, that lets the listener know part of the reason the band is playing so well: Because on May 9, 2015, Guitar George Baker and his band played to a full, rapturous house at Cafe Nine, laying down one smoking song after another. And thanks to a thicket of deftly placed microphones, twelve of those songs were captured and preserved, for us to listen to whenever we want.
This Friday, Baker and his band are reconvening on Cafe Nine’s stage to celebrate the album’s release.
Those of us lucky enough to be there on May 9 have our own memories of that night — a particularly sweaty solo from Ianello, a furrow in Baker’s brow as he dug deep — and one of the pleasures of hearing A Night to Remember is to match the recollection of the night with the recording of it. Some things happen in a room that microphones can’t catch. As good as the band’s boogie-licious take on “St. James Infirmary” is on the album, there was something about the way it bounced off the walls of Cafe Nine at the time that made it transcendent; you can hear that in the way the crowd cheers during the song. But the recording also reveals things that we might have missed. “The Thrill Is Gone,” which came across as the slow burner of the evening, has a subtle and gorgeous rhythmic complexity to it, and some astonishing melodic phrasing from Baker and Lloyd, that the album brings out in loving detail. Turns out the performance of that song was even better than we thought it was.
Whether you were there or not, though, A Night to Remember is a testament to Baker and a terrific document of the guitarist playing at what is arguably the height of his powers. Sophisticated in its details and emotionally direct, refined and visceral, the album is a pleasure to listen to from end to end. By including the crowd that had gathered to hear Baker play — maybe it was inevitable, because the place was loud in its appreciation that night — it’s also already a snapshot of one moment in the city’s history that will likely only grow more poignant over time. Just as Etta James Rocks the House conjures up that Nashville evening in 1963, and Johnny “Hammond” Smith’s Black Coffee lets us all get a taste of what the scene at the Monterey Club on Dixwell Avenue was like in 1962, George Baker’s live album lets us all be in Cafe Nine’s crowd on that foggy May night, to hear not only the music that was played, but everyone who were there and spoke up, and the way their voices sounded in that room. True to its title, A Night to Remember lets us know that it really was. And if the album is any indication, this Friday will be, too.
The George Baker Experience performs at Cafe Nine on Nov. 20. Tickets are $5. The album can be purchased at the show. Click here for more information.
