Brian Slattery Photos
From the stage at Cafe Nine on Sunday night, Mark Zaretsky deemed the crowd “intimate.”
“It’s the calm before the storm,” one audience member said. “Should we scream?”
Zaretsky, on harmonica and vocals, was fronting the Chicago Dawgs, which also included Tom Crivellone on guitar and vocals, Mike Nunno on bass, and Marcel Blanchet on drums — three of them Chicago natives transplanted to Connecticut. The Dawgs, in turn, were holding down the latest installment of Cafe Nine’s very long-running blues jam, which happens at least once a month on Sundays. By Zaretsky’s recollection, the jam existed in the 1980s, and was led by local blue legend Robert Crotty for years in the 1990s. One of Zaretsky’s other bands, the Cobalt Rhythm Kings, got its start in 1996 when they were thrown together on the jam’s stage. It took a four- or five-year hiatus, only to be rejuvenated two or three years ago with the George Lesiw Band leading it. Now Zaretsky is one of a few people charged with making it run.
The format is straightforward. The house band plays a short set — for Zaretsky, that means 25 to 35 minutes tops — and then opens the floor to whoever wants to join. Participants sign up on a list near the stage, giving their name and the instrument they want to play, and it’s pretty much first come, first served.
“If they’re here and they’re on the list,” Zaretsky said, “they want to play.” And Zaretsky wouldn’t have it any other way.
It was a quiet night at Cafe Nine — the end of the summer, a lot of people away — but the people who came out were ready to listen, and to make music themselves. The Chicago Dawgs fell into a groove very quickly, trading songs and banter.
“That was ‘Somebody Loan Me a Dime,’” Zaretsky said early in the set.
“Probably worth more back then,” Crivellone deadpanned.
“It would at least get you a phone call,” Zaretsky said.
Zaretsky led another tune about Oakland that name-checked other cities — but Zaretsky slipped in the local names of New Haven, Bridgeport, and Waterbury.
“The original line is about Sausalito,” Zaretsky said at the end of the song. “But what am I doing singing about that?” This led to a discussion about whether California towns or New Haven itself deserved more to be name-checked in a blues song.
“I’d rather be in New Haven,” someone from the audience said. As the Dawgs finished their short set — a lively combination of funky numbers, slow blues, and some sharp shuffling — a few names appeared on the list in front of the stage.
The first jam participant was Ron Frederick, who subbed in for Blanchet on the drums. Together Crivellone, Nunno and Frederick settled into a driving shuffle that Crivellone used as an opportunity for extended riffage of both the musical and verbal variety. In between expansive solos, with Frederick and Nunno holding down the groove, Crivellone told the (fictional) story of a “study partner” he had as a younger person. His grandmother, he said, disapproved. The study partner was female, he explained, and “she wasn’t Italian, so my grandmother wasn’t into it. She was prejudiced, you know?” His grandmother forbade him from going to see her. Crivellone warned her that his “studies would suffer,” but she still said no. “And I had the blues from that day on,” Crivellone concluded.
Vocalist Sean Rainey then joined the band onstage to jam first on Led Zeppelin’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” and then on Bob Seeger’s “Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll,” which Rainey delivered with skill and enthusiasm. By a third of the way through the second song, he assumed the role of bandleader, getting Zaretsky and Crivellone to solo in between the verses, getting all but Frederick on the drums to drop out for the second-to-last chorus, and then bringing everything to a caterwauling conclusion.
For Frederick, originally from Detroit but now living in the Seymour-Oxford area, the jam sessions at Cafe Nine and other towns in the state were a staple of his schedule; he went to one every week. “My wife is very understanding,” he said.
He played drums as a student, through college and after college in the 1960s. He played jazz and show tunes, not rock ‘n’ roll. “In those days you could get a gig in a bar four to five nights a week — and they paid you,” he said. But not well enough for a steady income. He didn’t play music for 45 years, as a draft to Vietnam, marriage, work, and family intervened. But “I never got rid of my drums,” he said. “I always kept them.”
He started playing again in 2006, just before retiring. “These jams gave me a great opportunity,” he said. “There’s so many great musicians along this coastline. And as a drummer, you’re lucky if they tell you what they’re going to play. And you have to play all forms of music.”
He fell into the blues jams starting with the jam at the Acoustic in Bridgeport, often anchored by Crivellone. “The welcoming spirit that exists at these things is great,” he said. “It means a lot.”
“There’s a community of guys that builds from these jams,” he added. “Bands have been formed.”
The Chicago Dawgs took a short break to let Nunno rest his fingers. But the break wouldn’t last long. The list wasn’t empty. There were still more people who wanted to play. It was what everyone had come to do.
The next Cafe 9 blues jam happens Sept. 8, anchored by the Tom Crivellone Band. Doors at 8 p.m., show at 8:30 p.m. Admission is free.