Saturday September 26th I went down to The Spot on Thayer for a lovely art show and concert. There was a multitude of cool artwork from paintings and post cards to sculpture and jewelry. Knowing less about art than I do music the best I could say is I really liked it all, I even bought a pair of earrings for Nicole as a birthday present a few weeks later from Serasi Jewlery. Scheduled to perform for the evening were The Chelsy Lau Band and Josh Fulford. After a few minutes of perusing the ballroom’s artwork I grabbed a seat in the stage room and got ready to enjoy the show.
The Chelsy Lau Band played two sets, the first two clips are from the first set with Chelsy Lau on lead vocals and piano, Russ Miller on drums, Raylor Munson on bass and Pat Condon on guitar. The last three clips are from the second set with the addition of horns, Christyn Brown on trombone and Andy on fiddle and sax:
The first number was straight bluesy rock and roll, Chelsy sang soulfully while at the helm of the keyboard, Christyn harmonized the backing vocals, Russ rocked out on the drums, Pat lent melodic guitar tones while Taylor drove the music with the walking bass line. Their second number was a bit more poppy rock and Chelsy showed great inflections in her voice. Josh took the stage next and jammed out solo on guitar for a while before The Chelsy Lau Band returned to stage, but we’ll continue with how the playlist is setup. After the break The Chelsy Lau Band came back with horns blaring and a cover of The Grateful Dead’s “Ophelia”. Showing their funkier side the got the room swinging. Going forward this iteration of the band has been dubbed Sauce and has been quite busy playing out around the scene. Look for them New Years Eve at The Blackstone. Keeping the funk flowing they broke into a new original which had the audience grooving. The final clip I caught combined their solid funk style with a bit of reggae, and certainly had me swaying.
Josh took to the stage and played some solo guitar between The Chelsy Lau Band’s sets. Using loop petals and background noises he kept it interesting for the duration:
The first jam was southern rock jam bandy, very reminiscent of The Allman Brothers Band to me. He kept a great groove going for quite some time that had me jiving in my seat. Josh was preparing for the next experimental jam when one of his friends climbed on stage to man the drum kit. Presuming it was the house kit he had grabbed the sticks and started to tap around when Russ noticed and pointed out that they were his drums, and not the venue’s. Josh got back to his jam and filled it with layers of loops, it was certainly a cool series of riffs and Josh looked like he was having a blast. Again, I had a great chill night at The Spot, one of the more relaxed atmospheres in Providence, and always great music.
