Though the answer sounded rather obvious, it had never dawned
on me before upstanding, upright bassist Brian Williams spelled it out.

“That’s because you can’t clog on grass,” he said. Williams
was sitting in on the bottom end with The
Ruff Alley Rounders, bringing extra
happy to Abilene’s Friday night happy-hour hootenanny. He was explaining the
board lying in front of the four-piece band as it fiddled away in the corner.
The young lady that mounted this board — there to amplify her red-cowboy-booted
feet — bobbed and clogged and stomped in an exuberant gallop that resembled
step dancing if the Irish ever moved their arms. The band huddled around a
single mic King Biscuit style and bopped
instrumentally rural and Tin Pan as folks washed it all down along with the
dust of the work week.

Boston soul-shouter Jesse
Dee is getting bigger and better, and a little more polished. I
don’t begrudge the man success, but I liked it better when he served up his
shaggy blue-eyed soul a little more close to the bone and medium rare. The kids
still ate him up as he warmed the stage for the Ryan Montbleau Band Friday night at Water Street
Music Hall. Walking in off of Water Street I had sort of dismissed Montbleau as one of those mixing-in-a-lot-of-everything jamsters. Well, I was right to a certain degree, except for
the indifference I expected to feel. It wasn’t there. I’ve got to tell you, I
was knocked out by the band, the groove, the tone, and the dynamics. It was all
wonderful. Sure, the band jammed. But when you’ve got cats with a well-rounded
vocabulary, you tend to listen a little closer and
dance a little longer.

Mochester
from Rochester was sandwiched between the two acts, rocking steady and in
earnest with an exemplary drummer that really stood out as the band plugged
though its own mid-tempo rockers and took a detour into Stevie Wonderland.

On Saturday night I was due for something hard and heavy and
stuck my head in the metal blast furnace that was Lowkey at the Firehouse
Saloon. The band was a volatile mix of old-school heavy with new-school
arrangements, kind of like Pantera, just not as over
the top. The band bounded about maniacally and chugged full steam beneath
vocals that roared in melodic urgency and guttural intimidation.

This article appears in Apr 10-16, 2013.