What a concept: two groups, veering in different idiomatic directions but sharing at least one musician, and a cavalier disregard for the factionalizing forces that have largely kept different audiences apart. Chalk one up for the Bay Area tag team of post-folkie singer-songwriter Noe Venable and jazz-plus drummer Scott Amendola’s band, who put in a folk/jazz/whatever double-header of the sort we need more of.
If there was a common denominator between Venable’s deliciously left-of center acoustic guitar based song parade and Amendola’s funk-jazz meets mutant-gospel and Knitting Factory ready genre splicings, it has something to do with creativity that resists categorization. In Venable’s case, her aesthetic involves mixing catchy, simple melodies and songs that touch deep but also swerve quirkily into unexpected zones. Case in point: she announced one tune as “a song about the last day of the world seen through the eyes of a woman named Glory who used to be a man.” She paused, then added, by way of explanation, “I grew up in the Castro.”
Her voice, a unique blend of boldness and vulnerability-- like her lyrics-- embellished the inherent beauty of tunes like the waltzes “The Invisible Man” and, especially, “Down Easy,” the dreamy title tune of her new CD. She was abetted by the textural freshness of violinist Alan Lin and acoustic bassist Todd Sickafoose.
Sickafoose stuck around to play bass with Amendola’s band, with wily, versatile electric guitarist Dave MacNab-- comfortable on the Scofield-McLaughlin-Frisell axis-- and saxist Eric Crystal, who picked up a melodica on the BBQ-saucy “Slow Zig”. Their set floated from ethereal gospel-ishness, á la Paul Motian, to saw toothy funk vamps like “Street Beat,” to a slow, haunting 9/4 ballad. Needless to say, diversity was in the house, from tune to tune and set to set, along with promising musicality in the making, and we had to love it.
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