Posted by On August 13th, 2023 I almost didn’t drive into Town for an afternoon of jazz, but I did and I’m so glad.
The St. John’s instrumental jazzy jammy trio Big Space instantly became our favourite “local” band when m’lady and I saw them for the first time the previous December. Despite this, and the fact that m’lady hadn’t seen them since that inaugural show (this would mark my third Big Space show of the summer, and the second in a row that was an afternoon mini-set), we were balking mostly because of the $25 cover charge, which is utterly laughable in retrospect. But a lazy Sunday morning found me looking for things to click and I finally clicked a link to the other band on this bill, a band curiously called The Offering of Curtis Andrews.
“Hey now,” I thought after the first ten seconds, “this is really good!” So I did a google search and found a website. Turns out Curtis Andrews is the drummer of the band, and he had studied in Ghana. “Hmmm.” The site also said that the guy has a PhD in Ethnomusicology and that he is big into Indian melodies and rhythms. “Interesting.” And he’s based in Vancouver but he’s originally from…what? Just up the road from us in Carbonear?!?
“You know,” I said to m’lady who was relaxing on the couch. “Maybe we should drive into St. John’s today after all.” She cleverly agreed.
The free EV charging parking spots on Duckworth Street were just a block away from Sláinte and they were empty. I parked and plugged the car in. M’lady and I crossed the street and stepped into the hip, modern whiskey bar. The rectangular space had a fancy, well-stocked bar encompassing the entire right side while the back wall was a room-wide floor-to-ceiling window facing out to the St. John’s harbour. In the middle of that wonderful vista the band(s) were set up facing a handful of tables.
(That back wall of windows offered a wonderful and unobstructed panorama of a woefully mediocre view. I mean, I know it’s a working harbour and everything but would a couple stands of trees along the waterfront and a walking path dotted with the scattered park bench and interpretive sign kill you? That’s all it would take. Do that and the Beavertail stands will just naturally grow in place.)
We sat two tables back from “stage” right which afforded us a good sideview of both acts. Not only did the vantage-point protect us from having the sun blaring into our eyes for half the afternoon, it also gave us a great view of all the dancing children. Yes: children. For not only was this an all-ages show, it also soon became clear that this was a reunion of sorts for the friends and family of Curtis Andrews. There were three-year-olds dancing all over the place, each one with a beaming parent trailing behind eagerly filming with their iPhone.
Big Space was up first and they were ah-mazing. They started with an improvisation (as they always seem to do) before moving into a positively sublime Frisell-esque number that was worth the $25 right there. I’m serious; I often pay so much more money for such lesser music and hardly blink an eye about it* so yeah, the second song was literally worth the price of admission. And it just kept getting better and better. There is such a cohesion of shared interest between the three guys in the band. They are really, really into getting locked with one another and when they do it’s like musical meditation. And not just for the musicians: m’lady had her eyes slammed tightly closed for the entire set. Myself, I find it hard not to keep my eyes on the drummer. He’s just so into it. And musicians being “into it” is my favourite thing to watch. Well, that and Sesame Street, for mostly the same reasons.
Between sets I glanced over at the drummer and main dude from the next band. “Y’know,” I said to m’lady, “if you stood that guy next to Duane Andrews I’d almost swear they were brothers.”
“Well, what’s the name of the band?” she asked.
“Hmmm,” I started. “It was something a bit odd and then a guy’s name…like the Blessings of Somebody Somebody or something like that…” Wheels started turning in this cluttered little head of mine. Duane Andrews was a fabulous swing jazz guitar player from Carbonear, and my friend Robert once mentioned that Duane’s brother was an excellent drummer who had studied percussion all over the world…
“The Offering of Curtis Andrews,” m’lady stated, obtaining the info from a nearby chalkboard.
“Yeah, that’s it!” I exclaimed. “I guess he is Duane’s brother…”
“Mmmmm-hmmm, I guess so,” m’lady said in a flat tone steeped in rhetoric.
Just then Curtis sat down at the drum kit. Set up in front of him were a guitar player (Brad Jefford) playing a oddly-shaped headless guitar the likes of which I had never seen before, a bass player (Josh Ward) with a wide six-string bass, and a pianist (Bill Brennan) sitting at the bar’s 6’ grand piano (I was surprised and pretty impressed that the bar had its own grand piano). The only man standing was the sax player (Chris Harnett). All four of the sidemen were reading charts off of e-tablets (though to be fair, from my vantage point I couldn’t see it the pianist was reading or not, but I suspect that he was.)
Their set started with a long, surprisingly quiet and remarkably complicated congealment of convoluted beats, angular rhythms, scrolling time signatures, and articulated melodic fragments. I was joyously aghast at how intricate the music was and yet how perfectly relaxed all the players were, despite having to traverse a through-composed musical adventure together like they were one big instrument. And nobody was more relaxed than percussionist Curtis Andrews. I couldn’t believe how lightly and unconcerned he hit his snare, just nailing part after part totally in complete sync with the other guys. If it was me I’d be all Bam! BAM bam ba BAM! Bu bu bu bu b’BAM BAM!, but not this Curtis Andrews guy. Nope, he was all tuh. tuh tuh ta tuh. tst tst tst tst ts’tuh tuh. And I’m not saying that he just sat there like he was waiting for the bus. Au contraire, it was again with the musical meditating.
And tight? Man, they were tight.
The second song was more of the same but with a completely different flavour. And so went the rest of the set. Some of the songs sounded African, some sounded Indian, some of them sounded very Montreal jazz…but it was all astoundingly intricate and all wonderfully played across the board. The music was Zappa-esque, fer crying out loud. It was prog-jazz.
That’s it…Prog-jazz. The offering that The Offering of Curtis Andrews offers is prog-jazz.
I mention that the musicians were reading because it utterly shocked me, for two reasons. 1) The ability to read music as complex as what I was hearing was basically at an orchestral level, and it’s hard to find guitar and bass players (if not pianists and sax players) who can read that proficiently. Especially ones willing to split half of a $25 cover charge five ways and look so damn happy to be doing it**, and 2) More than once Curtis and the musicians traded laughs and stories about the times they’d had during recording sessions at a nearby studio back in 2008. So these were the same guys from Andrews’ albums, and presumably the same guys he generally plays with.
And here they were reading. Crazy/not crazy I suppose.
At one point Curtis mentioned that he had a CD but he didn’t have any with him because nobody buys CD’s anymore. Which is true. It’s too bad he didn’t follow his brother Duane’s lead and get the masters stamped onto vinyl. I would’ve ran to him after the show to buy one.
As it was, as soon as we determined that there was to be no encore m’lady and I took a final glance around the room and promised each other we’d come back to Sláinte sometime – hopefully when there is someone playing jazz on that grand piano – and then we stepped out into the waning sunshine to find our car fully charged up (free of charge, if you’ll accept the pun) and we drove off into the sunset towards our ancient ocean home, exchanging gasps the whole way home.
Totally worth the $25.
*Okay, okay…I blink eyes sometimes. In fact, I’m sure many people would say that I am so quick to criticize a band’s live performance that any claim that I “hardly blink an eye” at a subpar show borders on the absurd. And I’m confident that even those that don’t say this would be quick to agree with those that did.
**Incidentally, I must say that I’m saddened that a show of this calibre couldn’t draw as many as forty people, even with at least thirty members of the crowd unquestionably falling under the “friends and family” category.
Todd Man Out 