I’m willing to bet that if you threw a cocktail olive in any direction at the packed house for Simon Phillips’ Friday night show with his Protocol V band, odds are you would have hit a drummer in attendance in order to get inspiration from the jazz legend. Not only that, but word must have got around that he was bringing in his full drum kit, as only the voluminous Catalina’s could have a stage large enough to fit Phillips’ Wagnerian set that included but was not limited to three snares, who knows how many tom toms, a drum gong, some octobans, an oriental trash that hung like a parachute and an upside down mounted 24”swish cymbal knocker that would cause a fire hazard in smaller venues.
And Phillips used everything like the precision of a diamond cutter with his stellar Protocol team of Ernest Tibbs/eb, Otmaro Ruiz/key, Jacob Scesney/sax and Alex Sill/g that put the fuse back into fusion on this torrid 90 minute set. I’ve seen this unit a number of times, and they are to the p oint of being not only telepathic in their performances, but seamlessly tight and cohesive. Phillips and the five bass stringer Tibbs stirred a slow simmer on the complex “Imaginary Ways” that built up in butanes under Sills’ firey guitar work, while the kinetic “When The Cat’s Away had the leader dig into a funky beat and Scesney’s big bold and beautiful tenor showed the important difference between having a big sound as opposed to a loud sound.
The tropical “Nyanga” featured Scesney’s sweet sounding soprano as Phillips, Tibbs and Ruiz percolated out rainforest feel, leading up to Phillips fiendishly difficult pattern on “Indian Summer” under Scesney’s alto. The opus of the evening was the musical journey of “The Long Road Home” featuring Sills opening things up on a luxurious minstrel’d guitar before Ruiz took the baton for a passionate trek before the Phillips and Tibbs led the charge and Scesney switched between soprano and sax and even playing with some pedals to create an electric goo for a luxurious climax.
Phillips then fed red meat to the ravenous crowd with a work shop of a drum solo ,using each piece like the ivories of a piano, which caused the self effacing leader to joke “if you swing your arms around enough, you’re bound to hit something” and then closing up the evening with the hard hitting band on an avalanche of a shuffle on his “hit” with Jeff Beck on the Mack Truck of “Space Boogie”
Always the team player, Phillips said after the encore that “these guys make me sound fantastic”, but in reality it was the Protocol V band that makes music sound fantastic. While he filled the stage with his drums, he also filled Catalina’s with inspiring music.
Upcoming shows at Catalina’s include Lizz Cole 01/29, Jimmy Webb 01/31-02/01, Gunhild Carling 02/05, Andy Garcia 02/06 , Judy Wexler 02/13 and Steve Tyrell 02/14-15