About three years ago I caught Jess McChesney's solo act.  Though I found it technically interesting in just how he does his thing, I was rather luke-warm on the music itself.  It was ok.  I suppose I thought much the same of Jess's music as many of the elitist singer/songwriter musicians think of cover bands, talentless.   Dependent on the electronic toys, and lifeless.  Fast forward three years.  Things have changed.  Jess hasn't just been resting, he has been getting better.  Way better, and I don't think I will pass up an opportunity to see him again.   It was a great show!

It is Saturday night and I am once again in a bar.  I didn't really expect to be.  We have a tough enough time wrangling free child care one night a week, let alone two nights in a row.  I feel an extra twinge of guilt because when I was talking to Faith Ulwelling at the Mousetrap on Friday night, she was imploring me to make it down to Sheri's Chippewa Club down in Durand.  No, no, I couldn't possibly make it.  But then about 10pm The Wife's posse called, "Hey, come down to the bar!" after an hour of clothing selection and makeup (not on my part --I'm a go as I am guy, you all know that.) we were walking in the door.

Let me explain just how it is that Jess plays, because in addition to it being great music this time, it is still technically interesting.   Jess is what I call a loop player.  He uses a lot of electronic gear to produce the modern day form of the one man band.  He has a foot switch for a digital recording device.  He presses a button and records a sample of himself playing his electronic drums.  Then another button and that drum beat continues to play, looping over and over.  Then he grabs a bass guitar and grabs a bass loop, playing over the top of the drums, sometimes he adds an acoustic, sometimes he plays some keyboards.  But, then when he has all of his loops playing he plays lead electric guitar over the whole thing and sings.  Really quite fascinating.

In the past three years Jess has gotten much smoother and it seemed like vocally much stronger.  The song mix had a Caribbean  flavor to it.   I didn't particularly have a musical high point.  I was fairly happy with all of it.  I liked the music selection.  I liked the beats.  It was crowd pleasing music and the bar was hoppin'  If you haven't seen Jess McChesney, or you haven't seen him lately, it is worth the trip.

The between set music was provided by Chris Way.  It has also been interesting seeing Chris improve over the few months I have seen him play.  His music is not perfect yet by any means.  Instrumentally he is better than vocals.  He has a fairly small vocal range that he might be able to expand some as he continues to play.  Currently he munges the two ends of the scale.  For someone just starting out though, he isn't doing too bad, and as I said he is improving.  So I look forward to continuing to see him on stage.  I felt like my musical highpoint was the Men at Work song _Land Down Under_.  The video clip I grabbed was representative of about where he is at.  It was also representative of the crowd in that I couldn't keep the drunken heckler out of the frame so I just gave up.

The crowd at the bar was all new faces.  A much younger crowd than we usually see there, it seemed lifted from the Spring Street bars, with a mix of Sheeley House.  Younger means more testosterone. More drunken buffoonery.  Maybe it is the security in numbers of being there with a band, but I don't usually see the audience up and screwing with a full band they way they did with both Jess and Chris.  It's really too bad to see that.   They are there to show us a good time, not to have some fool "air drummer" making like he is a rock god on their gear.

On Facebook yesterday I saw the news that the band QuinnElizabeth's lead singer, Elizabeth, delivered a baby girl. Nadia, on May 10.  Laboring all the way through Mother's Day.  News is that mother and baby are doing well.  Congrats to the mother and aunts of QuinnElizabeth!  Good news for us fans as well, QuinnElizabeth finished recording their newest CD just the week before.  Thanks for waiting Nadia!  Expect the CD to be released this fall.

 

	Jess McChesney sings the Van Morison song Domino
	Jess and another great loop.  It's half the show just watching him set them up!
	Chris Way sings The Band song The Weight

 

Jess is on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/jessmcchesney  Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/jess.mcchesney

Hits: 554

Comments (1)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Go, go Carpet Show!!!

Nice... a nod from the critics. Very nice.

Ben , June 04, 2010 | url

• 
• +0
• 
• 

Write comment

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Add Comment