Meat and potatoes, baby. Meat and potatoes. These two releases, nothing fancy, nothing ground breaking, are the comfort food of jazz. Good grooves, good solos and a get down to business attitude that makes you want to go to a club and take in these guys with a buddy or date.
Drummer Towner Galaher is accompanied by some of the best blue collar players in town: Pat Bianchi/B3, Donald Harrison/as, Craig Handy/ts and Brian Lynch/tp are all leaders in their own right. The three horns up front make for some ferocious music, such as the hard hitting “Simone” or McCoy Tyner’s “Blues On The Corner.” Bianchi’s B3 burns on the latter, while the pair of Shorter compositions (“Tell It Like It Is” and “House Of Jade”) show that the band can make even the more sophisticated charts cook like a meal at the Pantry. Galaher keeps the Bunsen burners warm all throughout, particularly on “Shuffleocity,” while each horn player shows how an instrument is supposed to sound. This musical meal will keep you full for hours.
Fronting a completely different array, Rollins alumni Bobby Broom uses his Grant Green-like lines in a trio format with Dennis Carroll/b and Kobie Watkins or Makaya McCaraven/dr on a collection of originals. His approach varies between squeezing and bending his tensile strings on a piece like “Minor Major Mishap” or splashing across the body almost like a Hammond on “D’s Blues.” His lyricism is evident on gracious material like “Fambrocious” while the interplay between strings and cymbals is as exciting as watching a 6-4-3 double play on “Call Me A Cab” and the title track. Broom’s got a personal style that is easy on the ears, and tempting on the tapping toes.
Origin Records