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Review: Big Sam’s Funky Nation
The presidential nomination season could have been over already, if only one of the candidates had thought to hire Big Sam Williams as campaign manager. The minute he took the stage Saturday night at the Continental Club and told people to start moving, they started moving — no first-song shyness, no waiting until the second or third cocktail kicked in.
For some two-and-a-half hours, the dancing just got wilder and wilder, the packed club a morass of wiggling hips, shimmying shoulders and waving arms. When the leader of Big Sam’s Funky Nation said “jump,” everybody pogoed like 8-year-olds, and when he crouched low, the whole crowd squatted down until he led the movement to boogie back up. His offhand exclamation of “Who dat?” started a rowdy Texan chorus of the New Orleans Saints fan chant.
Big Sam’s own moves are too advanced for amateurs, but by the end of the night, he had everybody executing a fairly complicated dance routine, even though it was still so jammed in front of the stage, there were inevitable collisions when he called out “To the left! To the right!” Such is the force of Big Sam’s personality, he could doubtless have had a caucus of the most rigid conservatives obeying his musical commands to “Move that body,” “Shake that thang,” and even “Second-line over and vote for Kucinich.”
Big Sam is as formidable a trombonist as he is a frontman, his solos as beautifully structured as they are technically dazzling. Usually, the Funky Nation also showcases the quicksilver harmonic instincts he honed early in his career, as a member of New Orleans’ celebrated Dirty Dozen Brass Band. However, on this occasion he left the rest of the Funky Nation’s horn section at home.
Long jams incorporated such New Orleans classics as “Palm Court Strut,” “Li’l Liza Jane” and “When the Saints Go Marching In,” but the set leaned more toward slamming funk, driven by bassist Doug Dietrich and substitute drummer Jamal Watson, with guitarist Casey Robinson frequently shredding like P-Funk’s Eddie Hazel or the Meters’ Leo Nocentelli in a metallic mood.
Keyboardist Adam Matasar frequently deployed a clavinet sound reminiscent of Stevie Wonder at his funkiest, and turned to celestial organ tones for sparkling jazz solos. Two Austin saxophonists took turns sitting in for a good part of the night, with Topaz McGarrigle providing a particularly strong foil for Big Sam.
Austin’s Black Joe Lewis & the Honey Bears were an inspired choice as the opening act. Between songs, Lewis was almost as retiring as Big Sam is extroverted, but Lewis is a superb blues shouter and arrestingly percussive guitarist. The young band’s horn-fueled fusion of gutbucket blues, raunchy R&B and psychedelic garage-rock was very different from the headliner’s sound, but its fearsome energy output was nearly as high.
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