There are jams, featured artist events, venues, and audiences that just seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly, coffee and pastries, and vodka and orange juice. Such was the case seen last night at Milford, New Hampshire’s Brick House. The Brick House is home to the Blues Thursday Therapy hosted by the inimitable Mickey Maguire, a blues bass player who knows how to get the job done. Aside from finding the right players for his house band, Maguire also has a knack for selecting the right feature artist for each week’s Blues Therapy.
Last night Maguire had featured. guitarist Billy Evanochko from Billy The Kid & The Regulators. Evanochko, a transplant to New Hampshire from Pennsylvania, has placed well in the International Blues Competition in Memphis and is currently vice president of Granite State Blues Society.
It also helps the Blues Therapy Thursday events that the Brick House offers such a wide open space. I believe it has expanded it size since I last visited it 20 years ago when the establishment was then called The Pasta Loft.
I arrived shortly before Maguire and his boys went into the slow boiler blues “Tin Pan Alley” by Stevie Ray Vaughn. It had the unmistakable Maguire groove, low, deep, smooth as Maguire always manufactures the Jack Daniels of blues grooves. Things got even deeper when sax man Pat Herlehy opened the number even wider with huge tufts of melody, a richness in his horn work becoming explosive, wide bursts of sax. That impressed the audience while serving the song by making it feel larger than life, which the spacious Brick House could accommodate. Billy The Kid paid out some tasty licks before grinding out a phrase that caught fire in his hands. He played as close to the blaze as humanly possible but it was a machine strong phrase.
Billy The Kid lead the band through a few more numbers with his considerate vocal phrasing and edgy guitar work, continuously proving himself a worthy feature artist. Meanwhile, swaying grooves from the rhythm section of Maguire and drummer Steve Wolpe built a platform for sax man Herlehy to plow forward with his mellifluous phrases. There was a solid chemistry through out the core house band members, and that, at times, built a second platform, one for Billy The Kid to pass a fiery lead guitar phrase over.
Herlehy, proving an able showman, walked his saxophone around the venue as audience members followed him in a train motion, all made possible by the modern technology available to today’s blues players. At one point in last night’s jam, I thought to myself that someone ought to sign Billy The Kid, whether to a label or to a band member contract. Someone out there should be noticing the kind of consistency and quality and variety of licks and phrases he offered up.
House band and feature continued to maintain a festive party vibe throughout the evening. A pump action beat and a lot of jumpy instrumentation made The Meters’ “Hey Pocky A-Way” a smashing draw, getting heads bobbing and toes tapping. Nailing down the fun groove to the Elvis Presley popularized “Baby, What You Want Me To Do,” the rhythm boys left open plenty of space for rambunctious guitar, excited saxophone, and fibrous vocals. If that wasn’t enough, the audience was treated to the Ringo Starr popularized “I Can Help,” the lyrics rolling off Mickey Maguire’s playful tongue, his quaint, positive vocals following the lilting thump he and Wolpe created with their chops. This lead right into Herlehy polishing up the song even more with his smooth dance of sax notes.
There was little bit of rockabilly thrown in before the players finessed “Midnight Special” with a stomping blues authority. Wolpe sang it as a steady blues with the others joining in to make for one boss chorus. Herlehy’s injection of sultry sax sashayed around the room with its dirty sound suggestive of much forbidden fun. The sensitive side of the four musicians came shining through when they performed The Band’s “I Shall Be Released.” They played this soulful slow dance number with restraint and taste, hypnotically drawing several couples onto the dance floor. Billy The Kid’s raspy vocal soothed the ear while a steady groove kept the dancers busy.
It was a heck of a lot of fun at the Brick House last night. A band that knows how to entertain with substantial songs and tasteful musicianship surrounded by a diverse and appreciative audience is always a winning combination. Therapy Thursday continues to thrive at Milford, New Hampshire’s Brick House.
brickhousenh.com
