Jonny Rosch mixes up his music like he mixes up his Friends: It’s all top-notch, and all over the map. At the Falcon this night, he mixed it perfectly.
With Mick Gafney (Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Mamas and the Papas, Chuck Mangione) on guitar; Danny Louis (Gov’t Mule, The Kinks, The Cars) on keys and trombone; Mike Merritt (B.B. King, Pete Townshend, Bruce Springsteen, Barry Manilow, Tony Bennett, James Brown) on bass; and James Wormworth, (spent years backing Conan O’Brien in the Basic Cable Band) on percussion barefoot, bandleader Rosch (whose credits would run as long as their three-and-a-half-hour set) stuck with keyboards, melodica, harmonica, vocals and jokes.
Rosh makes a running joke of his drinking, and it’s true he usually has a glass of something at hand. He’ll call for a round for the band, and a waiter will show up onstage with the order on a tray. At one point, during an extended rhythm-section solo, bassist Mike Merritt wailed away, eyes closed, and Rosch crawled on all fours across the stage to steal a gulp from Merritt’s glass, then crawled back. “Let me introduce the band,” he said, and the members shook hands with one another.
At the outset, Rosch announced that this particular lineup had no set list, had not played together before and had not rehearsed. Normally that’s my cue to head for home, but not here. The set list arrived via a homemade “Wheel of Misfortune,” with slices labeled things like “Dyslexic Dog,” “Chef’s Tasting Menu” and “Two First Names,” the latter of which resulted in a Dean Martin song Rosch delivered in his own absolutely stunning voice. I had never heard the song before, but I know in my soul Deano never delivered it with that passion, nor had his audiences gasping at the crescendos.
Few tunes were that straightforward. One song morphs into another, back again and then into a third…or fourth. Rosch constantly communicates with his band at an AI/psychic level, and with good reason: neither the band nor the audience knows where he’s headed, and I believe both love the adventure. After all, if you’ve played with the best—and they all have—musical challenges coupled with pure fun are hard to come by. Playing with Rosch & Friends delivers both, and we reap the rewards.
—Suzanne Cadgène
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