Blue Band
Blayney's Westport
December 10, 1999

Review by Paul "El Dormido" Taylor

Iowa’s Blue Band opened a 2 night run at Blayney’s Westport basement partyroom, or as Bob Dorr puts it, Big Dick’s Play Palace. The Blue Band has been packing them in for over a decade and draw quite a crowd of devotees to their brand of the Blues.

These guys are a slick, professional outfit playing a range of music from driven blues, through their endless repertoire of self-penned Christmas tunes, to standard ‘get ‘em up shakin’ what they got’ dance numbers, including just about any request from the audience conceivable.

Bob Dorr’s timeless, droll, dour demeanor is like the well aged sheen on a bronze work of art. He’s the whimsical, witty, free associating master of patter and audience facilitator who gives the band a unique flavor, sorta tying the musical stream of conscious together with a consistent identity. Not to mention he’s the man with the gritty vocals and masterful harp that brings a well seasoned blues sensibility to just about everything the band does.

Jeff Peterson is now joined by Bryce Janey in the twin guitar attack. Molly Nova anchors the band on bass and doubles on incendiary 5 string electric violin. Heathcliff Pattschull honks, shrieks, and melodicizes on alto and tenor sax. And Turk E. Krause is the superlative drummer.

You can’t have the Blue Band without Molly Nova. She’s at the very heart of the band pumping out its lifeblood. Her very solid bass percolates hot, every bit the rhythmic underpinning. Turk hangs his embellishments off the solid framework that Molly weaves. The guitars, regardless of whether they’re chopping the rhythm up or funking it up, ride on top of that agile bass line.

Molly Nova every bit fits the description that Benny Latimore gives in his song about the skinny little white girl that kicks ass on bass, playing the blues just for fun!

Besides which Molly is the modern electric blues violinist par excellance who will tear it up, rearrange it for you, and present you with a startlingly different package than you thought you were gonna get. Witness her takes on Freddy King’s Tore Down.

The Jeff Peterson/Bryce Janey guitar duo would in most other bands be the dominent sound, but everything is so well integrated in the Blue Band that they are rather the fabric of the sound against which the vocals and solo voices stand out. Jeff Peterson has been an excellent guitarist for a long time, adept at every style the Blue Band dips into, faultless in his soloing and solid in his accompaniment. Bryce Janey adds a new twist, sort of like a dash of Tabasco to the mix. He’ll hit the wah-wah pedal judiciously but the salient point to his playing is his tasteful choices and inventiveness.

Heathcliff plays his ass off like every body else. In a way, he’s the reed counterpart to Bob’s vocals, that growling sax voice with the appropriate honks and shrieks along the way, very tight in backing with the rest of the band. And he attacks when he plays, just grabs the music by the throat and blows.

The evening started off with Bob stamping out the count and launching into a harp intro to the first tune. Good blues beginning, laying out the territory right out of the chute. 3 AM Back Door Girl was the second song the band launched into, a selection off their new album. They then stepped into this year’s Christmas tune, by Jeff, Santa’s Got a Lot on His Mind, a funky, steel bright blues generator lyrically putting the Santa myth into a modern context.

By the time the last set rolls around, the audience is bumping and grinding indiscriminately, the band is as tight as they began, the set list is out the window and they are doing everything and anything the crowd wants with a good natured professionalism of a tried and tested crowd pleasing aggregation. Its obvious that they take the adulation of their audience and use it to fuel their performance.

The last set melange included another Christmas blues backed by Mustang Sally with an Allman Brother’s request deftly fielded from the slightly unfocused party people. Jeff took a turn on his tune, Last Love, that took a Carlos Santana’s stylistic hook, the stately guitar theme built on and extended, and folded in Heathcliff’s soloing, trading phrases, then unison playing to a grand finish. Derivatively lovely and well constructed. Bryce hit it with his one of his own compositions off a just released album that was thoroughly modern, wah-wah, shredded phrases, punctuated statements.

If you wanted to furnish your own nite club, you would want the Blue Band. They are like one of those gleaming, bright white appliance’s that you ohh and ahh over, and when you open the doors, all the best features you ever wanted come spilling out.

--Paul "El Dormido" Taylor