Bob Pratte & Friends is what Whippersnappers in Londonderry, New Hampshire are calling their bi-weekly Monday night blues jam. Named after its affable host, Bob Pratte & Friends is a tight knit blues jam featuring locals from the immediate area as well as jammers from that south of the border state. For the last day of a three day holiday weekend, last night’s jam turned out to be a lively event.The house band is a trio consisting of the inestimable Mr. Pratte on guitar, Rich Knox on bass, and John Medeiros Jr. on drums. The three warmed things up with Pratte getting a clear crisp sound out of his new Paul Reed Smith guitar. The Fret board has little black birds instead of dots marking the notes.
“Crosscut Saw” gave Pratte a vehicle to showcase his quivering adeptly picked lead guitar notes. “Further On Up The Road” found Pratte doing something interesting, stretching three or four greasy notes, coming up with a lot of music with fewer notes. Reggae classic “Stir It Up” let Pratte and his rhythm section boys have fun with the odd backbeat that supports much of this genre. Pratte has a much above average vocal ability too. He got really grooving with the backing harmony lines with Knox. Here, Pratte made his guitar hum a jittery, high-pitched phrase.
Pratte and company got a little bit funky on an instrumental workout. Knox pumped out a pushy bass line that listeners could feel moving the number along. His bass guitar solo reflected a lot of control over his low end monster, like he was walking a big Doberman around the block. Drummer Medeiros played one of his loose, jazzy series of bopping smacks that felt heavy even though he was keeping things soulfully down tempo.Next up was vocalist Jen Sperberg and her husband-guitarist Jay Sperberg with bassist Earl Rinker from an area band called 10 Miles More. They were joined by a young guitarist named Timmy Caloggero(who is currently looking for a band). Pratte took over the drums, which he plays as well as anything else.
Due to a sound board issue, Caloggero and the three members of 10 More Miles struggled to get through The Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter.” After a sound tweak from Knox, who was sitting out this set, 10 More Miles and Caloggero got much better. Jay Sperberg played a pretty melody on “Soulshine” with Caloggero pulling off some good riffage, steeped in southern rock and country rock. There was a crispness in Caloggero’s line that sounded deep fried south of the Macon County Line.
The Sperbergs, Rinker, and Caloggero did their best work on “Little By Little,” with both guitarists grinding out their meaty phrases over a steady rocking horse groove from Pratte and Rinker. Jen Sperberg got slicker at the microphone. Her belty sustains packed a punch in her raspy throated delivery. “Hound Dog” gave her a chance to really flex her vocal muscles, feisty, driven, with plenty of sassitude. The two guitarists were bracing, offering raw strident phrases.The next line up last night featured guitarist David Papa. His low key lead guitar phrase, as smooth as Jack Daniels, had that sweetly compressed blues down pat, pressed out by his skillful fret work. “Before You ‘Cuse, Me,” played down tempo style, found Pratte belting out that verbal backslap to a very unfaithful woman who inspired the song. Pratte’s eloquent style made the guitar sing the notes, neat and clean. “Your Daddy Don’t Rock and Roll” by Kenny Loggins was solidly played and sent many of us over age 40 down a trip through memory lane. It’s impossible not to associate a major popular song with what one was doing when first hearing it.
Soon, Bob Pratte was crooning “Kansas City” with smooth gentlemanly aplomb. His voice coolly jutted out over his frisky rhythm notes as Papa launched into an expressive flight of fancy guitar phrase.
After the next break, two teenagers from Alvirne High School in Hudson, New Hampshire, representing their band Neon Down, played younger generation music. “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains Of Wayne, “Please Tell Me Why” by Blink 182, and an obscure song by Green Day made up most of their set list. The bass player Devin Carroll, who kept cracking jokes about the audience being too old to know his music, announced “something by the dinosaurs Tommy Tutone. Carroll and his band mate, guitarist Ian Elliot, played the 1980s hit “867-5309” very handily. Remember their names, everybody: Devin Carroll and Ian Elliot of Neon Down.The next lineup, Knox and Medeiros with guitarists Mike Fioretti and Chris Noyes, got themselves into some beautiful and strange territory. The four mashed the main riff from The Kink’s “You Really Got Me” with Roy Head’s 1965 oldies classic “Treat Her Right.” Noyes picked off hard jangling notes and Fioretti picked out brittle roots notes. The two guitarists did their experimental jamming on Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing.”
After their Hendrix workout, the two guitarists conjured up a down tempo version of “Polk Salad Annie,” playing it nice and rootsy and tasteful, with Fioretti picking some fine shiny country notes while Noyes poured his slide flavoring over the old time Americana tunefulness. They played it so tasteful, audience members were probably ordering some Polk Salad as their appetizer.
Noyes got belty on the stop-start rhythms of “Sugar Coated Love” as Fioretti served up mounds of his oldies rockabilly hard twanging guitar picking. There’s nothing quite like having two, count ‘em two, guitarists who can spice up a bi-weekly blues jam with real down home American blues, rockabilly, and whatever else they could pull out of their rootsy bag of tricks.
Last up, Brian Ducharme played guitar on “Just A Little Bit” with Papa backing him on rhythm. It was a cool combo of blues lead guitar and oldies R&B rhythm guitar. “Tigerman,” another of Ducharme’s jam favorites, offered Papa a chance to play a brief feisty lead. “Big Boss Man” received dual R&B style guitar riffs then a smoldering lead from Papa.
For the grand finale, Fioretti lead the house band with his huge guttural vocal on “Eliza Jane,” which benefited from the mad combination of Fioretti’s rangy talents and the others and was a good close out number to the evening.
Bob Pratte & Friends is off to a solid start. To be able to pull such talent out of their homes on a very cold holiday evening shows the Pratte drawing power. Knox and Medeiros are very skillful rhythm section players and the house trio offered much even before the guests took to the stage. Bob Pratte & Friends appear every other Monday night at Whippersnappers. Every other week is the Lisa Guyer hosted Monday Night Muse. Guyer invites young aspiring players as well as name recognized masters like Sully Erna, Charlie Farren, and Jon Butcher for a rocking music education forum.
Music fans just cannot go wrong on Monday nights at Whippersnappers in Londonderry, New Hampshire.