W.S. Walcott Medicine Show

The original Brooklyn Bowl in Williamsburg (it has now been franchised all over the country) and its owner Peter Shapiro have been very kind to the New Orleans music world for years now.  Over the course of its history Brooklyn Bowl has hosted a myriad of amazing shows from not only well known NOLA acts but also they’ve provided a stage for the lesser known acts as well.  Last Wednesday night was no exception as Fandiem (a national music orientated fundraising platform) in cooperation with Music Cares and Brooklyn Bowl presented the first of what I hope will be a recurring yearly event, The Holiday Superjam. 

New Orleans has been a hotbed for musical prodigies for decades now, with such current household names as Harry Connick Jr., Trombone Shorty, James Booker and Ivan Neville to name a few all started very successful professional musical careers as teenagers.  Following in that amazing tradition is a young 16 year old named River Eckert.  As the story goes, when River was 11 years old, his mom received a phone call from an (initially) unidentified man inquiring about her son.  Finding this phone call from an obviously older man a bit alarming, you can only imagine her surprise to hear that the caller’s name was Harry Connick Jr. and he was interested in tutoring her son with the ivory keys.  I honestly don;t know how that all worked out but what I can say is that River is talented well beyond his years.  The young teenager opened the evening’s live musical offerings up with a short solo set with just him and his keyboard. 

(Note:  I say live musical offerings since the great DJ Logic had been spinning some really hot R&B tunes as a warm up prior to the musicians taking the stage).  Opening with the classic New Orleans tune, “Stagger Lee”, River came out hot and quite never cooled down.  His take on Professor Longhair’s “Red Beans Cookin” to finish off his set proved to be a veritable masterclass on the stride piano, one which I’m sure had ‘Fess smiling down on the stage.

Following Eckert’s set, the band took the stage and what a band it was.  With Dumpstaphunk veterans Ivan Nevile and Tony Hall on keyboards and (five string) bass, respectively.  On guitar and vocals we were treated to Nick Cassarino from the band Nth Power, an amalgam of jazzy soul and R&B as well as drumming powerhouse Nikkie Glaspie also from Nth Power as well as Dumpstaphunk.  Lastly, we had Shira Elias on background and lead vocals, who throughout the evening never let the fact that she is very pregnant grt in the way of her moving and grooving.

I hadn’t originally planned on writing a rundown of all the incredible songs which these dudes offered up but quite honestly everytime I thought I’d heard what had to be the best song of the night it was followed by something even hotter.  We would end up getting 2 full sets of music from the group that would transpire over just about two and a half hours.  The first set started off with a smoking version of The Rolling Stones’s “Miss You” followed by an unheralded all timer in my opinion, Bobby Womack’s “Across 110th St.” into Sly Stone’s “Family Affair”.  Up until this point the existing band members shared lead vocal duties.  But at this point we got our first “guest’ vocalist when Reggie Watts took the stage to perform a hilarious and remarkable version of Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got To Do With It?”.

Following Reggie Watts we were treated to our second guest of the evening, none other than original bassist for The Meters, George Porter Jr.  With Porter taking over bass duties Tony Hall moved over to second guitar but nobody told him that he was second because his chops on the 6 string were off the charts.  Porter and company offered up the old Meters’s classic “Just Kissed My Baby” which they played as swampy and filthy as one could have hoped.  Porter would remain on stage as Louis Cato of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert fame next joined everyone. 

Cato, needless to say, took the stage and was nothing short of pure fire as he joined Porter for singing duties on another Meters song, “Africa” before he took over with MJ’s “Man in The Mirror” followed by set closer “Take Me To The River” which obviously had every single body at Brooklyn Bowl shaking and baking.

What was supposed to be an intermission turned out to be not much of one after all.  After a short period, Reggie Watts would saunter out on stage presenting a short set of electronic beats and rhymes to satisfy the soul.  Followed by River

Eckerts taking the stage again, only this time joined by Craig Robinson from The Office.  Who knew that Craig was such a stellar crooner?  The duo would perform their own take on John Lennon’s “Imagine” which although similar to the original was quite a departure at the same time.

The official second set commenced with two songs which I’m sure nobody in the audience had on their bingo card for the evening.  First was The Who’s 1982 hit(?) “Eminence Front” which segued into Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On” which

had Shira Elias absolutely killing it on vocals.  Following this little bit of rock and roll, it was Ivan Neville’s turn to shine on vocals as he did the heavy lifting on the Prince medley of “Little Red Corvette” and “I Would Die 4 U”.  

Neville and Elias would share vocals on Cindy Lauper’s “Time After TIme” before George Porter Jr. again joined the band onstage for a swinging version of “Sneaking Sally Through The Alley”.  Craig Robinson rejoined Shira Elias to share vocals on a sweet duet on Bill Whither’s “Use Me” at which point the band pulled an audible, as far as I could tell, the only one of the evening.  Instead of going into “Sweetest Taboo”, they all decided to do the Rufus and Chaka Khan funk fest of a song “Tell Me Something Good”. 

 

Next up would be the most surprising and off the charts fantastic song of the evening as Reggie Watts did his thing with Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”.  Reggie performed this late 80’s dance floor classic with all the grace and aplomb that you would have expected from Whitney herself, and let me just say it was just simply fantastic.

Following that, the band wisely called it an evening since it was pretty obvious that that performance was going to be difficult to match.  The trouble was, the crowd was so ecstatically worked up that there was no way an encore wasn’t going to be called for.  Of course the band kindly obliged the calls for one more and ended the evening with a rollicking and rocking version of “Werewolves Of London” complete with everyone taking the stage for this apropos finale.

All in all, this was a show for the ages that I for one never saw coming.  Two full sets, comprising almost 2.5 hours of resplendent and most often, off the beaten path cover songs that had the crowd eating every second of it up.  I sure hope that this does indeed become a yearly event.

SLIDESHOW OF EVENING’S FESTIVITIES: