Originally posted on Ithaca.com, with pictures, on April 21, 2015.
Whatever construction crew members had a hand in building The Haunt should be congratulated on doing a good job. Shoddy work might have resulted in the rock club collapsing the evening of April 16.
Two (literally) big bands played The Haunt that Thursday night, one of those happy meetings of two touring acts that can give great joy to the music fan in this centrally isolated hamlet while blowing some eardrums away.
Turkuaz was on their way down to the Philly suburbs before hauling back to Massachusetts for a Saturday night show and trooping back to central PA by the evening of 4/20.
Sister Sparrow and her Dirty Birds were heading up to Syracuse to play the Westcott Theatre the next evening.
In Ithaca they met on this one evening, and put on a show that justifies all the superlatives both groups have accumulated over their past few years of incessant touring. Turkuaz has been called a “funk army” by Relix; the Wall Street Journal said the Dirty Birds’ sound is “stick-to-your-ribs.”
Like the brash and/or lush timbre that horns provide to a band? These groups got ’em. They are both big bands, if we’re not comparing them to a Count Basie group – Turkuaz had nine players on stage for their set, and Sister Sparrow & the Dirty Birds numbered seven. Forget the numbers, though, because the sounds are big, real big, and rooted in the Grand American Rock Tradition.
The Dirty Birds opened the show, with a heavy horn riff that took full advantage of Brian Graham’s baritone saxophone’s low end and Phil Rodriguez’s full-bore trumpet blasts. On the harmonica, Jackson Kincheloe danced throughout the night between adding to the horn lines, supporting his sister Arleigh’s vocals, and taking the occasional funky chickachickawahhh solo that’s usually associated with a mid-70s R&B record.
The whole band was tight and wailing, providing a suitable palette of bluesrockinsoul for Ms. Kincheloe – i.e. “Sister Sparrow” – to demonstrate her vocal talents. “Powerhouse,” “sultry & sassy,” “brassy,” all the easy descriptors have been claimed by prior writers – let’s say that Ms. Sparrow can hack it on a tune made known by Aretha – “Dr. Feelgood” – and leave it there.
The only disappointment of the evening was when Turkuaz came onto the stage and were not wearing their multicolored jumpers rocked in all the press photos and at least one Schuylkill County, Pa. festival show a couple summers ago. Even so, the Brooklyn-based group’s production values are still in-your-face and plenty funky.
A Turkuaz show is very much a production, in the best sense – every player knows what he or she is doing and plays their part to its scripted conclusion. And that script ends in people dancing. Most of the attendees don’t dance in as synchronized and slinky a manner as frontwomen Sammi Garett and Shira Elias, but they dance. Unless Turkuaz plays a graveyard, everybody dances.
Behind the soaring lead vocals of saxophonist Josh Schwartz, Turkuaz and the Dirty Birds closed the show with a rendition of “A Little Help From My Friends,” in the classic Joe Cocker style with everybody on stage. Despite the joint effort ,The Haunt did not fall into Cascadilla Creek, so everyone will have to return sometime and give it another try.