New Haven’s glorious fetish for 1950s rock ‘n’ roll (thank you, Jon Stone) was in full force at Cafe Nine Monday night.
There was that now-classic sound that Elvis, Scotty Moore, and Bill Black made at Sun Studios in Memphis in 1954 and 1955. But there was also the ranging spirit of that era, in which, for an exhilarating few years, the conventions of rock ‘n’ roll still hadn’t been nailed down and seemingly anything was all right, as long as you could dance to it.
Headliners Woody Pines — Skip Frontz, Jr. on bass, Brad Tucker on electric guitar, and Woody Pines himself on vocals, rhythm guitar, and drums — brought that classic sound to Cafe NIne’s stage Monday night. Frontz thumped out solid slap bass that anchored the band’s groove to the floor every second, and boy could he step out when called for. Tucker unleashed lead lines that, in the best tradition, borrowed equally from country, blues, and jazz to satisfy and surprise. Pines himself kept things hopping with a wicked swing on his right hand that he translated now and again to the Chekhov’s drum of a floor tom that stood in front of him on the stage, waiting to be played. Pines’s singing married a nimble tongue to a powerful country tenor to produce melodies both wordy and groovy. It kept the healthy crowd that stayed to the end of their set dancing, or at the very least, swaying in their seats.
Brian Slattery
The Pines set was also memorable for the band’s loving embrace of shtick. A lyric about Mike Tyson caused Pines to take his hands off his guitar for a measure to mimic boxing. And the band, which had visited New Haven before, knew how to throw the crowd some red meat.
“Got into town early,” Pines said between songs. “Went to Frank Pepe’s.”
“Course you did!” someone yelled back.
“And what did we order? That’s right, the clam pie,” he said, to cheers.
If Woody Pines represented Elvis, Milksop: Unsung was the evening’s Joe Hill Louis, rougher, rawer, and carnivalesque.
The band — Dan Carrano on vocals, mandolin, and guitar, TJ Jackson on vocals, guitar, and banjo, Michael Paolucci on drums, and Greg Perault on upright bass — ripped through a set of twisting originals that turned on a dime, stopped suddenly, and rocketed forward with a keen sense of mayhem and menace. The band’s hilariously shambolic onstage banter (Carrano: “Thank you. We have two more songs.” Jackson: “What are they?” Carrano: “I don’t know. I haven’t heard them before.” Perault: “I don’t know how to play either of them.”) belied how good they were as musicians. Carrano and Jackson navigated the angular, not entirely intuitive lines they’d written for themselves with energy and precision, and Paolucci and Perault never failed on the rhythm.
Together the four formed a muscular musical unit, and their new material was even tighter and vivacious than their older stuff. It suggested that the band was still moving, growing, developing — in a way, right before the audience’s eyes. Maybe like it must have felt to hear rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s, having no idea what was coming next, and being impatient to hear it.
“It’s Lenny’s birthday!” Carrano shouted at one point from the stage.
There was a huge round of cheering and clapping from the healthy-sized crowd.
“That’s the biggest applause we’ll get all night,” Carrano said.
“No it’s not!” someone yelled from the audience. He was right.
