The David Bromberg Big Band

Mike + Ruthy
The Egg, Albany, NY, Nov. 9, 2015
Review by B. A. Nilsson
AS DAVID BROMBERG AND HIS BAND erupted into his signature original Sharon for the
umpteenth time, as I felt the joy of seeing and hearing this live, for my own somethingth time, I
realized that I was wallowing in the same happy reaction I get when witnessing a bang-up
performance of, say, Beethovens Seventh. I know it all too well, I have recordings galore at
home, yet something magical continues to happen in that confluence of real-time happening and
audience presence. By virtue of being in the house, emanating pleasure, we coax a better
performance out of the band.
And Im here to tell the abundance of cell-phone wielding recordists that no crude video comes
even close to the live experience. Youll never be able to revisit it with as much excitement
again, so you might as well keep the fucking things in your pockets. (But you wont. Youre
frightened of primary experiences. You might as well be having sex by mail.)
Too often I relegate the opening act to the final paragraphs of a piece like this, so let me reverse
that and praise Mike + Ruthy for an unexpectedly good performance. Unexpectedly only insofar
as I havent heard them before, but entirely to be expected considering Ruthys Ungar-family
pedigree and Mike Merendas songwriting skill. Add to that their instrumental proficiency she
played banjolele, guitar and violin; hes equally splendid on banjo and guitar and vocal
impressiveness both solo and in harmony, mix in a Guthrie-centric tradition that harkens back to
the early 20th century, and the recipe is looking good.
It sounded even better. Their third number, Woody Guthries My New York City, a lyric Nora
Guthrie asked them to set, featured a slow, breathy Ruthy vocal that completely won the
audience. Ruthy also ripped into high-energy version of Etta Jamess Somethings Got a Hold
on Me later in the set, but the originals, among them On My Way Home (featuring Mikes
Arlo-esque vocal), Toast My Memory and Covered, which crammed fiddle, guitar and
harmony vocal into the mix, also proved captivating.
Then Bromberg came out and killed it with one of his favorite openers, Charlie Pooles Dont
Let Your Deal Go Down, morphing it into fiddle tunes to show off the young and horribly
talented Nate Grower, who switched instruments at the end of the number to join Bromberg and
Mark Cosgrove in a fast-picking mandolin trio.
With blues numbers at the heart of the set, the seven-piece ensemble gave plenty of solo time to
its members. Peter Ecklund took his cornet to that amazingly affecting place he always finds in
Nobody Knows the Way I Feel This Morning, which also inspired reedman John Payne to visit
his clarinets chalumeau register. A couple of tunes later, he switched to flute and Ecklund
picked up his fluegelhorn for the melancholy Bromberg original Diamond Lil.

Bassist (and Albany resident) Butch Amiot has been with band for over 30 years and, while he
rarely grabs any spotlight, does a virtuoso job of sculpting the numbers. While drummer Josh
Kanusky is comparatively new, he brings an excellent rhythmic vocabulary to the group.
And theres Bromberg himself, of course, who can go from virtuoso fingerpicking in Dark
Hollow to a maniacally nasty electric guitar solo in Doug MacLeods Fifty-Dollar Wig a
new one for me in the bands repertory to a simple but mournful solo backing to his vocal in
Bob Dylans It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.
Sometimes I go a whole concert and forget to play any of my songs, the guitarist said, but we
also got If You Dont Want Me, Baby (with backup singing by his wife, Nancy Josephson),
Watch Baby Fall, Tongue and, of course, Sharon an impressive panoply of numbers
running a gamut of styles, sporting well-crafted lyrics and sounding as if theyre simply part of
the worlds musical fabric.
I have the courage to hire a flatpicker better than I am, Bromberg said before loosing Cosgrove
into a merry but blistering Alabama Jubilee.
The band is so versatile that they went from jazz club to bluegrass in successive songs. The first,
a tribute to recent pharmacological ballot triumphs, was Stuff Smiths If Youre a Viper, with
a rawboned Bromberg vocal. Then he turned it to pure bluegrass and, with Payne and Cosgrove
and Grower, conjured the long-ago days of the early Stanley Brothers with The Fields Have
Turned Brown.
Buell Kazees Roll On, John has become Brombergs standard final encore, performed
acoustically by the quartet with Payne and Cosgrove joining on the harmony vocal and Grower
adding fiddle obbligato. If the concert had up until then been drawing us back to a time when the
blues were young, this gorgeous little number clinched it.
Metroland Magazine, 15 Nov. 2012
Copyright 2015 by B. A. Nilsson