Music Moves The Savage Beasts

Daddy Long Legs raised his guitar in the air midway through his band’s opening set. ​“New Haven, Connecticut, clap your goddamn hands,” he shouted ​“Come on, we are all so happy to be back here with Barrence Whitfield and the Savages. They’re gonna rip it up. You know that’s right.”

He knew. I knew it. Everyone at Cafe Nine on Friday night knew it. In fact, the ripping up had already begun.

Both bands were returning to the Crown Street club together to kick off a tour supporting Whitfield and the Savages’ recently released album Soul Flowers of Titan. The room was packed immediately, and the crowd attentive and ready to take it all in from moment one.

Daddy Long Legs, hailing from New York, started off the proceedings with the band’s namesake on both vocals and harmonica — sometimes seemingly at the same time — Murat Akturk on guitar and backing vocals, and Josh Styles on drums and maracas, also occasionally at the same time as he played throughout the set with one drumstick and one maraca. ​“Bring it on in,” Daddy told the crowd as the first song began, and they remained there for the rest of the two sets.

Throughout songs such as ​“Evil Eye” and ​“Blood from a Stone,” the band never let up on the growling, pounding, relentlessly rocking music, punctuated by their aptly named lead singer’s seemingly never-ending movement of limbs, feverishly conducting sound and spirit. This was the kind of rock ​‘n’ roll that invokes the church metaphors, the bringing together of the crowd into a rapturous frenzy. A woman screamed woo (“I like that scream,” Daddy Long Legs responded). A man screamed hallelujah. More and more people started to move and dance. Daddy put down his harmonica and clapped his way off the stage, through the crowd to the back of the room, and then back up again.

When he switched over to guitar for a few songs that ran one into the other, Daddy held the guitar high and over the heads of the front row of listener-worshipers and asked if they were feeling it. Many screamed yes. It was hard not to feel every inch of every shake, shimmy and roll. After a solid near one-hour set, the crowd was more than warmed up for the headliners.

Barrence Whitfield and the Savages, hailing from Boston, Mass., made their way to the stage through an audience that had swelled and moved right up close during the break. Whitfield noted how packed the room was almost immediately.

“It looks crowded out there, like there isn’t enough room to move,” Whitfield said.

It was crowded, but it did not keep people from moving one bit. In between songs Whitfield spoke ever so kindly, including about the bar itself — ​“We love Cafe Nine. It’s one of our favorite places to play,” he said — wearing a smile and shining not just with perspiration, but with appreciation for the love he was receiving in return for his own soulful beauty.

“Let’s rock now, please,” he added softly, as the band launched into song after song of hard pumping bluesy rock ​‘n’ roll that makes you remember why it was considered shocking when it first became popular way back in the 1950s, sounding both sexy and holy at the same. Song after song from the new album, including ​“Slowly Losing My Mind,” ​“Tall, Black and Bitter,” and ​“Tingling” simply built upon one another and got more and more screams and sass from the audience. The band — Peter Greenberg on guitar, Phil Lenker on bass, Andy Jody on drums, and Tom Quartelli on saxophone —seemed to have boundless energy and were incredibly tight yet playfully fun and loose throughout the jam-packed set.

Whitfield appeared to get vocally stronger and physically more animated as the set progressed through over an hour of music and movement, sound and fury of the highest reverence. Again, the church metaphors beg to come screaming out of me. The hands rising up to the sky, the call and response of Whitfield and the band to and from the audience — by the end of the night the room had a euphoric air that was also dripping in your basic rock ​‘n’ roll sweat and swagger. Simply put: Amen.