Posted by It took almost three-and-a-half years but I finally found a favourite local band. They are an instrumental trio called Big Space and they are based out of St. John’s which, under the circumstances, counts as “local” (despite being an hour-long drive from my home).
In a province where 95% of live music is classic rock or country cover bands (or worse: solo guitarists playing along to pre-recorded “tracks”*) the search for interesting original music forced m’lady and I to expand our audio footprint well beyond our little village home ‘round da bay.
And speaking of m’lady, it was she who first came across Big Space. The band was being interviewed in the province’s very homey monthly publication, Downhome magazine. The recipe-driven Newfoundland periodical tends to focus on small-town human interest stories, quilting, and historical fluffing of the island’s early fishing and hunting pioneers but man-o-man, if a Newfoundlander manages to write and record some songs of their own and release ‘em on a CD, Downhome is definitely giving them a few pages.
Anyway, she read the article and listened to a few songs on the internet and we became determined to see Big Space play live. But live music being what it is on The Rock, it took a long time for an opportunity to present itself. Like, almost a year. But when that year was almost up, lo, Big Space had not one, not two, but three shows booked inside a month (all of them in St. John’s, of course). We pulled out the calendar and deemed that the show on December 28th, 2022 could act as my birthday show (if a day early) so we booked a hotel and made dinner reservations.
(Heck, we’re not going to drive all the way into town without taking advantage of all the big-city perks!)
The hotel was good (I made full use of the pool table in the lobby), and so was dinner (baseball top with twice-baked potato), but the real treat was how great the band was. I mean, they were outasite.
It was a pay-what-you-can show at a small pub called Erin’s. When we arrived there were maybe a dozen others there, tops. We grabbed some drinks and a table near the tiny stage.
The band was set up in a circle; the drummer and the guitarist facing each other with the bass player in between. They started with a straight-up improvisation and by the time they finished the first song I was already a fan. And things just got better.
The drummer was so, so solid. And more importantly, he was fully engaged throughout, playing with a wide smile and rapt attention the entire time. The bass player was just as impressive. His default setting was staring at the drummer with his mouth slightly agape, a pose he held throughout the evening. As a result, the rhythm section both looked and sounded like one big instrument.
And then there was the guitar player. What a sound! What a tone! What a creative, endless stream of ideas! He was just so incredibly interesting to watch, comping mad chords up and down the neck at breakneck speeds, invisibly transforming harmonic swaths into slithery, sinewy modes, and most impressive (to me at least) was how guitar-y it was. He used jangly open strings at every opportunity – a country-twang concept almost unheard of in jazz – and he used them in his chords, in his riffs, and throughout his endlessly all-too-short solos; it was really quite inspiring, and something I should start doing more myself.
They played two sets, which felt good and familiar. I spent the setbreak talking to a couple of guys who were go-to-every-show kinda people. I suspect I will be seeing them again.
As a matter of fact, the entire crowd looked like people I wanted to hang out with. This was a crowd who had found something different, something not so “pop”ular, and something they loved, and they came back again and again. In other words: these were my people.
And, it turns out, Big Space is my kind of band. Of course they are! They sound like a cross between nero and Sisters Euclid with a smattering of Bill Frisell’s open-string ethereal jazz thrown in. So yeah, they are definitely my thing. At the end of the night I told the guys as much.
At the time of this writing the band has still not booked another show**. Good thing I suppose; gas here is expensive.
*In most pubs around Newfoundland the term “live music” is almost entirely a euphemism, and while I sorta almost gotta hand it to the first guy who showed up for a gig with a guitar and a karaoke machine and had the chutzpah to call it “live music”, by the same token this person should definitely be on the “retirement” list when the time machine-driven historical corrections begin.
**At the time of this editing, they have. Yes, I edit.
Todd Man Out 