Brian Slattery Photo
Midway through his set on Sunday evening, songwriter and celebrated blues singer Greg Sherrod told the house at Cafe Nine that the last trip he’d made to Europe to perform was right after the terrorist attacks in Paris. “People said, ‘Don’t go,’” he said. “I said, ‘If I don’t go, then hate wins.’ What can I say? Love wins. I went and I had a ball.”
Sherrod, who performed in and around New Haven for years before moving to Stonington a couple years ago, returned to Crown Street Sunday for his long-running annual birthday bash at Cafe Nine, and he brought his Providence-based band to show his Elm City fans what he’s been up to since he left.
In a broader sense, the evening was about the need to be kinder to each other, even in the face of a harsher world.
That message began with the opening act, the New Haven-based Paul Bryant Hudson. Hudson’s music had an easygoing surface that revealed layers of rhythmic and harmonic tension as the songs progressed. As a singer, Hudson really knew how to use his voice, whether he leaned powerfully into the middle of his range, explored its edges, or climbed into falsetto. As he supported his melodies on keyboard, his band — Maxx Spinelli on bass, Pete Greco on guitar, and Jeremiah Fuller on drums — proved a muscular accompaniment, surprising yet always in the pocket.
Hudson was amiable and self-deprecating in between his songs. “We write some good stuff. We write some stuff that’s in-between. Sometimes I write some of the crappiest stuff. You’ll never hear it, though,” he said.
He was right about that. As his songs ranged in subject matter from social issues to John Henry (“he was a sledgehammer-swinging badass, so I wrote this song for him.”) to the black rage that so many are still uncomfortable hearing about, the second half of his set became hypnotic enough that this reporter, well, forgot to keep reporting.
“Give it up for Paul Bryant Hudson,” Sherrod said at the end of Hudson’s set. “I couldn’t leave until this guy was in place.”
He meant his move to Stonington, as well as his increasingly setting his sights on audiences outside the state. The set he and his current band played suggested that move was invigorating. If Sherrod had left New Haven with his feet firmly in the blues and R&B — though already putting rock ‘n’ roll into the mix — his Providence-based outfit had helped him move even further in a rock direction. Taylor Munson on bass and Angela DeFazio on drums made for a powerhouse rhythm section. Guitarist Zachary Fenner ably deployed both his shredding chops and textural work to widen the musical palette, even once toward something with a little taste of Latin music. This gave Sherrod a chance to let rip the voice that people had come to hear. And rip it did, whether Sherrod brought it low into a silky croon or gave full throat to a raspy howl that could reach the back of the club without a microphone.
In between, Sherrod’s irrepressible personality filled the room, and the audience — many of whom were old friends of Sherrod’s — responded in kind. At the end of the band’s song “Even Monet Had a Bad Day,” which Sherrod said he’d written during his last trip to France, an audience member raised his voice.
“Right on the mon-ay,” he quipped.
“Is that Alan on the puns?” Sherrod quipped back. “You’re killing it.”
Sherrod apologized for not playing a straight blues set toward the end of the evening, not that anyone in the audience was complaining. Yet deliver blues he did at the end, with high-energy renditions of “Sweet Home Chicago” and “Got My Mojo Workin’” aided by Mark Zaretsky on harmonica and Jay Gerbino on bass.
For Sherrod’s last song, while his band laid down a relaxed but insistent groove, he thanked the audience for celebrating his birthday with him for yet another year. “Every one of you in this room,” he sang, “even the people I don’t know, I love you.”
As the band whipped more urgency into the music, Sherrod’s voice rose. “My name is Greg Sherrod,” he sang, “and I’m the luckiest man in the world.”
A shout in response from the audience: “Happy birthday!”