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When the Ottawa Jazz Festival announced their short winter concert series I was pleased as punch to see that Kevin Breit was scheduled to play three shows; two as collaborations and one with his own band. It had been a while since I had seen Kevin play. I think the last time might have been in the same venue where these shows were all taking place: a square, modern, multi-venue contraption of a space called Nouvelle Scene. I remember being somewhat underwhelmed with that concert, and even the one before it (though I might be inadvertently extracting two experiences out of the same show…).
Anywho, to be on the safe side I had purchased a ticket to the first collaboration and Kevin’s own show; I could decide on the final collaboration later. It turns out the first night had been a major disappointment. It was a neo-classical contemporary improvisation that had Kevin up against three brick walls. Scratch that, they were three mattresses, and none of the balls that Kevin lobbed in their directions ever, ever bounced back. Not even a little. And so it was that I walked into night two with lower-than-usual expectations. Add to that the fact that Kevin Breit was leading a new “band” called the Bona Fide Scoundrels, undoubtedly a cobbled-together group of doubtlessly fine musicians who were set to perform with little or no rehearsal at all (Kevin is – to my knowledge at least – a notorious anti-rehearser.).
And boy, was I wrong.
I was seated right up front, dead centre with a half-dozen friends panning out beside me in either direction, and from the outset Kevin and his Scoundrels were drop-dead amazing. And they were obviously very, very well rehearsed, hitting off-time melody lines out of the blue with a perfect, precision-like tightness every time. The bass player was great, the accordion player was shockingly good and wildly versatile, and the drummer, oh, the drummer!
And then there was Kevin, eyes closed tight and playing his butt off, clearly having the time of his life.
Every song was new and completely different from Kevin’s Sisters Euclid stuff; this was definitely a real band. The songs were so very good, with creative melodies and interesting mood shifts, and all of it coming off as juicy as a band at the end of a nationwide tour. Which this wasn’t – they just sounded like it.
A huge dose of icing on this vast pool of gravy was a midset dedication to everyone’s good friend, the late Bradm. Kevin Breit performed a new song called Squeaky Fine that he said he wrote while thinking of Brad. He mentioned how Brad would always come to his Ottawa shows and tape them and how Brad would randomly show up at Toronto shows to tape him as well. “Brad must have recorded me at least fifty times,” he said, probably undershooting the number significantly. And the tune was great. Ironically, the set (including the new song and tribute to Ottawa’s greatest show-taper) went unrecorded.
“Nothing gets recorded anymore,” m’lady said to me after the show, and she was right. “It’s the end of an era,” I agreed. Another thing she mentioned was that we should get tickets for Kevin’s third show at the winter jazz fest, and she was right about that too.
In the end February 8th, 2019 was a night for redemption. Not for Kevin – he’s always great and required no redeeming – but I did. Or more specifically, my joy needed a bit of a jumpstart. By the middle of the first song of this concert my heart and soul had been drawn into the music like it had been back when I first encountered Kevin and the Sisters Euclid at Toronto’s Orbit Room more than two decades earlier. Yes, on this night I sat on the edge of my seat in the front row utterly enrapt, with my heart on the verge of exploding with sheer sonic glee throughout the entire show. It made me feel like a kid again; like I was revisiting my wide-eyed wonder at the musical world anew, which felt much better than my recent standard laissez-faire passé concert-going attitude.
After the show I settled in for a few beers at the late-night jam session in the downstairs lobby-cum-popup nightclub. I caught Kevin’s ear for a moment and told him that after more than twenty years of seeing him that might have been the best set I’ve heard him play. I’m not sure if that’s true – m’lady sure doesn’t agree – but that’s certainly how it felt in the moment.
And man, it felt good.
Todd Man Out 