Consider the Source | Dunedin Brewery 04.17.14

Somebody in Atlanta please call FEMA.  Now.  Get ‘em on speed dial or something.  There is no chance that Terminal West in Atlanta will be standing after Saturday night.  In fact, alert Jacksonville tonight, too.  Underbelly’s may suffer the same fate as the Dunedin Brewery did last night.

Because Consider the Source tore the roof right off the sucker last night.  Gone.  Poof!  And the seismic implications of what will happen when CTS, Tauk and the Motet converge on Marietta is beyond comprehension.

The Motet I’ve know about for ten years, but I never saw them until Bear Creek 2013 – twice – and just WOW!  And I had never heard of Tauk until a few weeks ago, when I lucked into seeing them twice – incredible!  And now Consider the Source, another band I did not know before this week.  I plan to do a full-blown shout-out about the Dunedin Brewery in my *spare time*, because they (and several other local clubs) continue to bring in amazing music week after week, keeping the Tampa Bay music calendar chock-full of magic and surprises.  Dunedin always posts blurbs about the bands coming, and that has helped me in my music selection at least a dozen times (read: Serotonic, Holey Miss Moley, Future Vintage and more).  [OK, it also doesn’t hurt that they have awesome beer and food!]

So I read the blurb about CTS.  To paraphrase a movie line, “They had me at McLaughlin and Coltrane.”  I will attempt a brief description, but the bio on their website is extremely well written and accurate, so be sure to check that out.  Their music is strong, muscular, fusion on top of rock on top of jazz on top of Eastern rhythms on top of reggae beats on top of polyrhythms.  I know that doesn’t help much, but my brain exploded about halfway through the second set (they played three and a half hours), and I am trying to pick up the pieces.

Gabriel Marin plays this bad-ass-looking fretless double-neck guitar, and he is the only man I can recall who plays in the style of John McLaughlin AND makes it sound awesome.  With John Ferrara on bass and drummer Jeff Mann, the music pivoted and turned and swirled and twisted itself inside out.  It was a masterful, magnificent, uncompromising performance.

I am not much a fan of bass and drum solos, but sometimes they work out perfectly.  That was the case last night, when Gabriel announced that “This will be our last song” and went to sit down with Mann.  Ferrara then played the introduction to “Ol’ Chomper” solo, and it was spectacular and cohesive.  Mann then joined him on stage, and he got solo space with Ferrara pitching in, and that was a cohesive solo, too, making sense in the context of the song, not just a flailing (as we have all seen too many times).  By the time Marin joined them, what little was left of the brewery roof just flew off into the Gulf someplace.  With my brain.

FEMA.  I’m just sayin’…