The Blue Note Grill Durham, NC
Contact: [email protected]
Web: vanessacollier.com
Players: Vanessa Collier, vocals, sax, guitar; Ben Rice, guitar; Justice Guevara, bass
Material: Blues, blues, and more blues was Vanessa Collier’s calling card this evening. With her perfectly stylized sax playing, she opened a can of whoop-ass and kicked it effortlessly off the stage, and in the process gave a nod to her Texas roots: Ben Webster, Charlie Parker, Pamela Hart and she seems to have jumped into Joyce Spenser’s skin a little bit. Playing all original material, she had no trouble moving through her new record, which she touted with thoughtful and memorable narratives. She introduced each one to this adoring crowd: “Sweating Like a Pig, Singin’ Like an Angel” was a crowd favorite, as was “Wild as a Rainstorm,” both climaxing into blues oblivion driven by her melodic and punchy sax. Ben Rice on guitar provided tasteful, in the pocket fills that left room for her soaring vocals and complemented the smoldering, low-to-the-ground groove.
Musicianship: If you were looking for flashy, over-the-top blues-Magoo nonsense, there’s no place for it on this stage, on such a rare and enchanting evening. Collier’s ensemble was a study in near-perfect musicianship, effortless playing and, with grace and occasional homage to that distant animal Roberticus Johnsonasaurus Rex, she brought the goods, had the near capacity crowd on their feet and hyper-groovin’ to her well-executed original material.
Her rhythm section was as tight as a drum, and sounding shiny and new, like they had been together for decades, without the cobwebs. Standout lower-register magic-man Justice Guevara and his knee-level slung bass (in the style of Dee Dee Ramone and Dusty Rhodes) gave a visual clue, that no matter where we are in the musical spectrum, we owe so much to the blues, a sound style that scratched out its existence over the eons to emerge as this uniquely American music.
Performance: This was as sophisticated a performance as it gets. This quartet—with Collier out front calling the show—was a slow-burn study in how to pace a performance, work an audience into a near frenzy and deliver a set of original material that was engaging as much as it was breathtakingly professional.
The sound was excellent, very well mixed, there was little if any downtime between songs and the whole experience flowed like Crown Royal poured over #2 sandpaper: smooth with a little bit of grit!
Summary: Every now and then, a Texas sax player steps out enough to make her own mark, blaze her own trail and build an impressive resume in a relatively short space of time. Vanessa Collier is an artist who will be with us for a long time since her talent and writing seem to have no bounds and the sky’s the limit for this remarkable cyclone of sound, sax and song.
