Brian Slattery Photo
Paul Harris of The Mushroom Cloud.
The sky was clouding over and a big winter storm was settling in, but inside Pacific Standard Tavern and BAR, it was relaxed and groovy. As someone yelled from the crowd at BAR: “Snow pants or no pants!”
Pacific Standard Tavern was hosting its R&B open jam with Pete Greco and Soul Du Jour. The night started off small; at 9:30 it was just a trio onstage of guitar, bass, and drums. But Greco as host was still game, as if he knew already it would get bigger later. After warming up on a blues, he pointed at the tip bucket in front of him.
“It’s how musicians since the dawn of time have gotten cigarettes, coins for laundry, and ramen noodles,” he joked.
Over at BAR, the New Haven-based funk rock group The Mushroom Cloud was heating up. Drummer Russ Harris, straight-backed and serene, had settled into a fast, precise, and infectious rhythm that his brother, Paul Harris, adorned with an electronic sheen from the keyboards. Bassist Max Schiavone — sitting in for regular bassist Charlie Mazur — swung his head back and forth and flashed smiles at the Harrises and the crowd of moving bodies. Up front they were dancing like they were ready to go all night.
But heads were bobbing even in the back, where artist Josh Korn had set up an easel and a light to paint to the music. It was his first time painting at BAR, but he paints in clubs at least once a month in the winter, and more in the summer when music festival season kicks in.
Korn.
“For the most part, as long as the band’s cool with it, the bar’s cool with it,” he said. He was there to “capture the energy of the crowd, and that the musicians put out.”
There was a lot of energy to capture. The Mushroom Cloud ended its set and was going to vacate the stage for the touring act to follow — Harris had even unplugged his guitar — but the audience wouldn’t get them go without one more jam. The band obliged.
Next was the G‑Nome Project, on tour from Israel. Without stopping once, the band launched into a set of songs that morphed effortlessly from jazzy and Latin-inflected to atmospheric and almost ambient, to Middle Eastern, with intelligence, deliberation, and allegiance to groove. Zechariah Reich on bass and Chemy Soibelman on drums held down the rhythm all night. Guitarist Shlomo Langer moved between prickly polyrhythms, lead, and sinuous harmony lines with keyboardist Eyal Salomon, who proved to be the group’s secret weapon; his sliding lead lines and intricate textures reinvented the band’s sound every few minutes.
And back at Pacific Standard Tavern, the promise in Soul Du Jour’s early start had come to pass. At midnight approached, there was a crowd in the place and a six-piece band onstage. The musicians had just wrapped up a stomping version of Prince’s “Kiss” when a trio of singers, who introduced themselves as Surrenity, LaQruisha Gill, and Tina Colón, took the stage.
“I’m going to take this a church for a minute,” Gill said. As the band settled into a slow and deeply funky beat, the trio embarked on a 20-minute vocal jam that had the crowd cheering, shouting, and singing along. Their voices rose and fell in waves, harmonies stacked on harmonies. An organ solo provided the transition the singers needed to get to a gritty, powerful “We Shall Overcome.”
It felt like the game had changed. As the trio left the stage, Paul Bryant Hudson took the mic to pull down a transformative R&B version of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” followed by an emotional original, “Black Parade,” that, just like “We Shall Overcome,” channeled the mood of the times. The sky was cloudier than ever. Snow was coming soon. Inside, it felt like things were just getting started.