As the funk ensemble West End Blend took the stage last Thursday for the second show of its ongoing January residency at Pacific Standard Tavern, I fastened a wide-angle lens onto my camera. The fisheye was my only shot at capturing the entire 14-person group at once.
WEB was more tightly packed on stage than we were in the crowd, and its members may well have danced harder while they played — this despite being on one of New Haven’s larger music stages.
Though maybe it was because Pacific Standard Tavern has become one of the grooviest of patrons.
WEB is yet another Hartford-based band that has found an audience in New Haven, joining the ranks of Wise Old Moon, the Hartford Hot Several, and others. The word that comes to mind at a WEB show is synch: The band plays a clean, lively funk that maintains its energy without sacrificing the practiced sound you might expect to come out of a recording studio.
WEB made waves in 2014 with an interview on WNPR. It released its first, self-titled album in September 2015, recorded at Telefunken Studios in Windsor, Conn., where they rehearse. This exhaustive band offers something for everyone, though the highlight of Thursday’s show was Erica Bryan’s resonant vocal effort. She might have the clearest, strongest voice in the state, belting out choruses with ease. (The group’s rapper, Tangsauce — noticeably absent from last Thursday’s session — raps with a cheerful, steady, rhythmic grind, like Black Thought, of the Roots, on Xanax.) Mike Oehmen on tenor saxophone, Vicky Medieros on baritone saxophone, John Mundy on trombone, and Mike Bafondo on trumpet together made for a top-notch horn section. They propelled the songs forward at every turn. On bass, Tom Sullivan helped tie the rhythm section to the horns.
Sam Horan on drums and Jesse Combs on guitar shared stage time with the openers, On the Spot Trio: Andrew Cusanelli on percussion, Daniel Mayer on guitar, and Kris Yunker on keys. Yunker also sat in for WEB’s Paulie Philippone on keys for the entire set.
“Wow. Just like we rehearsed it. Every time,” said Mayer in between his trio’s ten minute songs.
Regionally, jam music fans are spoiled for choice when it comes to which show they want to see any given week. On the Spot Trio’s improvisational music tended toward the jazzier side of jam rock, with each of the players’s seemingly independent parts overlapping or interlocking like musical gears. Daring solos took shape seemingly out of thin air, as the musicians followed through on their flights of inspirational exploration with a philosophical intensity.
Meanwhile, mballerdesigns painted live art at the back of the room. He used acrylic watercolors, warping shapes and colors. Before he started painting two months ago he was just another PST regular. Two representatives of the Love Tribe artist collective, Felicia and Kalomo, sold custom flat brims and necklaces on a table nearby, creating their own indoor Shakedown Street. Together with Awake Productions, Lovetribe hosts an art party at PST once a month, featuring regional and local DJs and percussionists (the next date for that is February 6). Paintings by Josh Korn newly adorned the walls at PST. His series, entitled “Map of the Self-Conscious,” changed hues like so many chameleons under the stage lights.
West End Blend’s Thursday residency at Pacific Standard Tavern, 212 Crown St., continues Jan. 21 and Jan. 28, 8 p.m. to 1 a.m.
