By LORNA CHEROT LITTLEWAY
MISTY BLUES, led by vocalist Gina Coleman, rocked out the capacity audience at Spencertown Academy Arts Center (SAAC), Saturday night, October 12. The program was produced in partnership with Capital Region Blues Network. Coleman and a trio of musicians played on a “Women in Blues” program, at SAAC last year, with two other acts.
On a blustery evening, Coleman and six Misty Blues musicians owned the stage and served up a two-set program of 12 songs from their “25th Anniversary,” “Silver Lining” and “Outside the Lines” CDs. The band included: Bill Patriquin, bass and trumpet; Rob Tatten, drums; Seth Fleischmann, lead guitar; Diego Mongue (Coleman’s son), bass, guitar, pedal steel and percussion; Dave Vittone (a merry impish fellow), keyboard; and Eileen Markland, violin. Most of the songs featured extended instrumental riffs by each band member. Patriquin, Tatten and Fleischmann also provided back-up vocals.
Between numbers Coleman shared biography with the audience including how she got into Blues singing. In 1994 she was acting in “A Raisin in the Sun” at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. One of her co-stars was actor/director Reuben Santiago, who told Coleman, a contralto, “You have the perfect voice for Blues.” Five years later Misty Blues launched its first public performance ever in Williamstown.
Saturday’s program opened with “Silver Lining” followed by “Swing My Blues” and “Shake These Blues,” which were recorded at the famed Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama one week before the pandemic struck in 2020.
Coleman shared that most of the music she writes is “about the people around me” rather than about herself but the next song, “I Don’t Sleep,” is “categorically about me.” Indeed Coleman, who has coached Williams College’s women’s rugby team for 29 years revealed that she was up at 4 a.m. shuttling her team to a competition, playing the game to victory and returning to Williamstown before crossing state lines to perform at SAAC. The song was “I Never Sleep.”
The fifth song “Enough Love For Two” featured Patriquin on trumpet and Coleman’s son, Diego, on bass guitar. Following that was a tribute to Odetta, whom Coleman met in 1994 at an Arlo Guthrie performance in New York City’s Bottom Line. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. dubbed Odetta “Queen of American Folk” and the “Voice of the Civil Rights Movement”.
Coleman said she marveled at the deepness of Odetta’s voice and proudly announced that Odetta was inducted into both the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame this year. Then she segued into the long time blues classic “900 Miles” followed by a cover of blues genius Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful.”
The set closed with an homage to Granville T. Woods known as the “Black Edison,” who invented the mechanics that make roller coasters run. “Granville T” was co-written by Coleman and Fleischmann and it had the energy of a wild roller coaster ride like the old Cyclone at Coney Island in Brooklyn.
The first post intermission song “Days of Voodoo” brought down the tempo from “Granville T” but added lots of funk. “Voodoo” was followed by a song that Coleman said her husband of 25 years, a “West Dalton Boy,” always requests the band to play. “I don’t know why.” The number was “You Can Have My Husband.” It was followed by “How’s the Blues Feels” and “One of These Days”.
To close out the set Coleman and company returned to Odetta and played a very soulful and spiritual “Hold On,” which Coleman said receives a “lot of play on Sirius XM radio.”
Saying that she was “too old to exit and come back on stage,” Coleman asked the audience if it wanted an “encore.” The crowd roared an enthusiastic “YEAH!” Coleman described “Where Your Blues Come From” as a tribute to the mostly Latin neighborhood where she was raised in the South Bronx. She credited Tito Puente and Celia Cruz influences. I detected a little bit of acid rock influence, too, in the Latin-infused “Where Your Blues Come From.”
I suspect SAAC will make Misty Blues a regular in its Roots & Shoots Concerts Series. They are a real treat regardless the weather.
