“It’s the applause that feeds the soul of a musician,” Rick Reyes said, with grace and humor, after a round of it came his way. The crowd at the Owl Shop was getting bigger, and Pasofino Social Club was just getting warmed up.
The Bridgeport-based Pasofino Social Club has been playing the Owl Shop — New Haven’s only cigar lounge—on College Street every Monday night for a few months now and is still going strong. This evening Reyes was on lead vocals and rhythm guitar. Marcos Torres backed him up on vocals and covered lead guitar. His sons Marcos Torres and Daniel Torres held down the drums and bass, along with Fernando García on congas. Together they ranged across the Latin and Caribbean musical world, from son to salsa to bomba to Afrobeat — a testament to the diversity of their influences and the musical passions they share.
“We’re a Latin-Caribbean band,” Reyes explained during their break between sets. “But we also have the depth” of drawing from multiple styles.
“Rick grew up listening to rock,” said guitarist Torres. “I grew up listening to salsa because I’m from Puerto Rico, but when we come together, it just works.”
He’s not kidding. The Torres brothers grew up going to gigs with their father, studied music in school, and have been playing professionally for years.
With García, they are an incredible rhythm section — hard-hitting, sinuous, and always groovy — while Marcos Torres plays guitar with strength, soul, and constant curiosity.
Brian Slattery Photo
All of this sets Reyes free on vocals. You can hear shades of some of the greats in his voice—Hector Lavoe, Carlos Vives, Marc Anthony—but Reyes, perhaps best known around here as the frontman for the Cosmic Jibaros, is very much his own man.
They also know how to work the room, with inspired covers of classics (Bob Marley’s “Stir It Up,” Bill Withers’s “Just The Two of Us”), energetic reworkings of Latin standards (“Sabor De Mi”), and vivacious originals by Reyes (“Lo Mato La Vagancia,” below) and other musicians they know.
They started off cool and slinky early in the night; as the crowd got bigger, they switched to dance numbers.
That was all a few people needed to get up and start moving, and they didn’t stop until Pasofino did. They ended with a kicking rendition of “Cielito Lindo” that changed the way anyone in the room might have thought about that song before.
Smart, lively, and infectious, the music at the Owl on Monday nights is something to catch. I’ll be back myself. I don’t even smoke. But Pasofino Social Club sure does.