The Dance Pit Into Overdrive

...California-based Mitch Kashmar and his crew almost made it look too easy. Granted, they were playing for those already converted to the blues, but the smooth, soulful singer/harmonica master and his veteran backing quartet couldn't help having fun when they came out to play for the dance-fuelled crowd just as the sun was getting ready to set.

This is not to ignore that the band found real hard-swinging grooves over a relatively wide-ranging set of tunes, despite Kashmar's admission at the start that "all we do is love songs." As they cooked up varied bluesy material on that formula, no one found a reason to quit shaking their hips.

Kashmar himself seemed able to sculpt a worldly range of melodies out of his harp, throwing in tasty embellishments and unexpected quotes into their quick shuffles and more dramatic ballad material. The band really stood out on the spare slow-burning numbers like Whisky Drinking Woman, where John Marx's economical, stretched-out guitar picking gradually trickling out like magic.
Jimmy Calire's versatile keyboard work included big, honky tonk block chords on some pieces, jazzier electric piano stylings, and a beautiful B-3 organ solo on the band's gorgeous, breezy cover of Horace Silver's Song for My Father, a number that also elicited a cool, spare electric bass solo from Steve Nelson.