Malcolm X Abram
Beacon Journal music writer
I checked out the world premiere Aug. 11 of the Lockbottom Jazz & Blues Club in downtown Akron, which featured local smooth jazz band the Stingers.
With the band set up right next to the rushing water (the Ohio & Erie Canal), a few tables (hey, the area could use a few more chairs, although you can bring your own) and the Dim and den Sum truck cranking out quick fancy food, it was a pleasant late suummer spot to sit and listen to music.
The band was good and tight, playing a mix of smooth originals and covers with a heavy dose of Latin jazz and some nice solos.
There was a pretty good crowd for the first show and my bison burrito was pretty good, too, except for the lack of onions and the strange, randomly shaped chunks of cucumber (seriously, for a second I thought they had skinned a whole pear and shoved it in my burrito).
On Wednesday, veteran bluesman Wallace Coleman and his band should bring out some folks who like to shake, rattle and roll.
Next door at the Civic Theatre on Saturday will be a show being referred to as a Lock 3 Extra featuring R&B singer Ledisi (pronounced ”lettuce-SEE”), smooth jazz saxophonist Pamela Williams and local comic Brenda McIver.
Besides being my Oakland homegirl, Ledisi performed a pretty hot set of her then mostly low-key adult contemporary R&B at Lock 3 a few years ago.
It’s interesting that the Civic folks consider this a smooth jazz concert because while Williams (aka ”The Saxtress”) is squarely in the smooth jazz realm and much of Ledisi’s previous output (three albums and a Christmas album) has had a decided quiet storm/light jazz vibe, on her most recent album she leaves the stately supper club behind.
She has always been more animated live, but on the album, appropriately titled Turn Me Loose, the singer indeed cuts loose vocally and musically, adding a funky ’70s R&B and rock vibe to her contemporary R&B.
She earned two Grammy nominations this year for best new artist (though her debut album was released in 2000) and best R&B album.
Turn Me Loose is her most up-tempo album and captures the energy she brings to the stage in funky tunes including the lead tune statement of intent, the breakbeat-driven Running and the taut Stax guitar and Meters-worthy drums of Knockin.
There are some smoother tunes for the WZAK (93.1-FM) crowd such as the sparse ballad Higher Than This or the waltz-time love lament Alone, but I’d wager her set will be a bit more funky and grooving than the last time she was here.
Another show that will be grooving though much louder, harder and faster, will take place at the BackStage concert club in Akron on Monday night featuring veteran noise-rockers Unsane along with Today Is the Day — arguably the noisiest most musically chaotic of the bunch — and Cleveland’s own recently reunited Keelhaul.
It should be a gloriously ugly night of ragged distorted odd-metered riffage, big walloping drums and screaming, grunting vocal exhortations.
Neither Unsane nor Today Is the Day has put out a record in three years but most fans wouldn’t be going to hear the newer stuff anyway, though I liked Unsane’s Visqueen quite a bit.
Any old fans who may be on the fence about the show should be happy to know that Unsane will be performing its breakthrough third album Scattered, Smothered & Covered from 1995 (wait for it . . . ) in its entirety!
That album garnered the band a lot of new fans and helped solidify its former label Amphetamine Reptile’s reputation as a home for loud, noisy, agitated rock and metal.
In the late ’90s-early 2000s, Keelhaul built up a healthy local and European following for its mostly instrumental, fairly complex tunes but went inactive for several years until re-forming to record the solid 2009 album Keelhaul’s Triumphant Return to Obscurity.
Some folks say bands like Keelhaul are one-trick ponies, but for Keelhaul its been a pretty good and influential trick that has trickled down into many of the younger metalcore, hardcore bands of today.
Malcolm X Abram can be reached at mabram@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3758.
DETAILS
• What: Ledisi, Pamela Williams and Brenda McIver
• When: 7 p.m. Saturday
• Where: Akron Civic Theatre, 182 S. Main St.
• Tickets: $10, $14, $25
• Information: 330-253-2488
• What: Unsane, Today Is the Day, Keelhaul and Mockingbird
• When: 9 p.m. Monday
• Where: BackStage Concert Club, 370 Paul Williams St., Akron
• Information: http://www.myspace.com/backstageconcertclubakron
