Karen Ponzio Photos
Frank Critelli lends vocals to Big Fat Combo.
“I don’t know about you guys, but it’s been a Friday,” said Julie Smith as she introduced local favorites Big Fat Combo, who were performing their scheduled patio show indoors at Best Video due to rain. It was about to become even more of a Friday as technical issues turned into an opportunity for the local music community to step up, step in, and turn the venerable video store and performance space into a friendly singalong for a portion of the evening.
Big Fat Combo — Tom Hearn on lead vocals and guitar, Cary Pollick on lead guitar and vocals, Tom Murphy on upright bass, and Jack Murphy on drums — have been together for 20 years, building a large and rabid fan base hungry not only for their originals, captured on the album Chicks Dig It back in 2010, but also for the dizzying array of covers they can pull out of a hat, ones that you would be hard pressed to find being performed by anyone else and in the way that Big Fat Combo performs them.
The band began with one of those covers, “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash, that Hearn dedicated to a friend in the audience, adding “if I don’t do it now, it’s gonna bug me all night.” These words would prove almost prescient.
They followed up with two more covers of Brenda Lee and Eddy Arnold, and then announced that they would be performing “the one about the guy who got a haircut at Norm’s Barbershop in Cheshire. “Chicks Dig It,” the lead song and the title of their 2010 album, is an original that typically includes lyrics such as “I showed him a picture of a groovy cat and said ‘now cut my hair just like that.’” Instead, the microphones stopped working. The band continued on with the song as an instrumental and then added one more, a cover of “Apache” by The Shadows, while others worked at the sound board trying to get the mics back on. After that song, they took a short break to see if the problem could be rectified, but came back while it was still an issue with another plan: a singalong.
“Sing as loud as you can,” Hearn instructed the crowd as the band began to play “You Are My Sunshine.” The audience obliged, and it was a sweet moment that made many fans and friends, who tend to sing along to all of the Big Fat Combo songs at every show, smile. Hearn then decided to recruit his friends in even further.
He called up vocalist Patty Shea for a number, and she chose the classic “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” a raucous number that highlighted not only her voice but the band’s rockabilly righteousness. Once again, many in the audience sang along with glee. Afterwards Hearn asked, “who else sings loud?” No one answered, and the band continued with two more instrumentals, including “Java” by Al Hirt.
Patty Shea shakes, rattles, and rolls,
“Fran, you want to sing a song?” asked Hearn of writer and the band’s frequent special guest vocalist Fran Fried. She obliged as the crowd erupted in applause, choosing “Flyin’ Saucer Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Billy Lee Riley, which she sang with unabashed joy while also bowing to Pollick as he soared through his solos.
Fran Fried pays homage to Cary Pollick
After another instrumental, the band decided to perform an original and fan favorite, “Tag Sale,” saying they would need some help. This is a song most fans sing along to at all BFC shows, so it was not a difficult request.
The next friend to come to the stage to lend a hand and voice was Frank Critelli, who chose the apropos “Stop Breaking Down,” originally recorded by Robert Johnson. After a few moments of the band working to get it just right, they launched into a gritty yet touching performance that saw Critelli traveling down the center aisle to sing directly to members of the audience, who beamed as he did so.
It was also during this song that the mics went live again. Another friend in attendance, musician Dean Falcone, had gone home to grab his own PA system for the performance space to use.
“That’s what friends are for,” said Hearn after explaining what Falcone has done to the audience.
Critelli captures the hearts of the audience.
“We got time for one more song,” Pollick joked, but there would be at least six more, the band coming back with gusto and offering more eclectic covers, such as “Bigelow 6200” by Brenda Lee as well as “Sugar Shack” by Jimmy Gilmer and The Fireballs (“No one ever requests Jimmy Gilmer and The Fireballs,” Hearn joked beforehand). But it was their cover of “Islands in the Stream,” written by The Bee Gees and made popular by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers, that really showed the magical way this band has with a cover.
“This is a song some people don’t care for,” Hearn announced beforehand, but you would have never known that the way the crowd responded. In the mighty hands of Hearn, Pollick, Murphy, and Murphy, it became a righteous rock anthem, one that you might blast on your radio as you rushed down Route 10 to catch your favorite band’s last set.
Hearn expressed his gratitude to everyone for their assistance, and then dedicated the next song, a cover of “The In Crowd” by Dobie Gray, to “all of you who come to shows at 5:30 on a Friday.”
“We get respect from the people we meet, they make way day or night, they know the in crowd is out of sight,” Hearn sang.
It wasn’t the final song — the band still had to make their way through covers of “7 – 11” by The Ramones, the blues classic “Tiger in Your Tank,” and their original banger “Hale Bop” — but it highlighted the beauty of an evening where community was key and everyone became a part of the show.