Album Notes

Lucky Brown

Live From...


by Brent Cole

westsound

As a taster to wet your whistle before their official full length debut, Lucky Brown has released two live recordings for your funk pleasure – Live at Graham’s and Live at the Water Street Brewery. Both venues are intimate, (which isn’t necessarily playing to the band’s strength as the premier funk band in town), they can pack out any of the local venues, bringing in hundreds of fans to shake their asses. Feeding off of that energy helps ensure fantastic performance – one that could be recorded and sold. But by not playing to their strengths, Lucky Brown show how impressive they are, the band has to work to engage the crowd, but not overwhelm them – hook them in on their own without using the masses to help their collective cause. Simply, it’s on the band to work their magic and in both instances, they have.

Both discs have essentially the same flavor – Lucky Brown live – but there are differences within the performances with each disc having different highlights.

Live at Graham’s – which is twice as long as Live from the Water Street Brewery - starts off with “Variations of a Bucket of Fat,” a swinging, funky and unbelievably hooky two-minute show starter that sets the mood for the whole night. For much of Live at Graham’s, maestro Joel Ricci lets the horn section take hold of the show. The songs are funky, mixing in different eras and styles into one organic beast and wildly different even within a single song – “Come One Now” begins with a few minutes of funk guitar, but eventually morphs into a jazzy jam session with individual members taking their turns at soloing. “Scatterbrain” is more focused as a band and easily the strongest song of the disc – the horns and the keys play together seamlessly that sucks the listener in.

The songs on Live at Water Street Brewery have a decidedly different feel, of the six songs, five are over 10 minutes long. Each of the songs feel less punchy than Live at Graham’s, more as if it’s a jam session and the group is at home in their garage, hanging out and just playing for the soul of it – it’s an incredibly intimate feel. The highlight comes from “Potatocakes,” a song which was released as a single – the horns drive the song while a solid drum beat carries through the with a steadiness that’s entrancing.

With the new album due to be released this month, discs are worth picking up if only to enjoy a live show any time of day.