It was well past the witching hour earlier this morning, when a young couple came in to the Blue Note, maybe four songs before the Tomas Doncker band were to leave the stage for good. They sat down, ordered a drink, and began to watch the show and the woman glanced over to her date and her smile was one of sheer pleasure. This was why people come to New York. To wander aimlessly so late late late it is too late to be even early, and run into the greatest band on earth testifying, shaking the walls, the essence and the soul of soul and blues personified. Only in New York.
I never got to see my good friend Tomas Doncker that cleanly, the first time I ever saw him live I knew who he was, I never had the opportunity to have this force of nature just hit me. I take him for granted but watching this couples to reaction to the howling, growling tower of a man and his all muscle hard as granite, no fucking around here guys rock band blow through some Howlin’ wolf classics , a Bobby Womack, and a handful of originals, three co-written by Pulitzer prize winning Poet Yusef Komunyakaa (one off their upcoming album The Big Apple Blues), I can imagine how it could hit you as just so much pleasure.
In the dead of night, Doncker and harmonica virtuoso David Barnes traded licks that made your head explode, Barnes crouching down to marshal all the air he could get into his lungs so he could muster and puncture song after song with sharp notes and stroppy runs. Doncker, just in the years I’ve known him, has grown as a singer, and this morning his voice had the rumbling power of a train in the still of night roaring through a small town. And while he slammed every song hard, some might claim too hard, his guitar playing could be very nimble indeed, letting a couple of smartly placed notes replace a solo before playing fast runs near the neck of the guitar.
Opening with an a capella “Moanin’ After Midnight”, following it with a blasting “Evil”, and concluding the evening with a joyful “Let The Good Times Roll”, the Tomas Doncker Band were what they always are, so adept at everything they play, we take them for granted. I think I take bassist Josh David entirely for granted, I see him there every time they play holding down the bottom, and I never mention him. Guitarist James Dellatacoma co-produced the Moanin’ After Midnight album and keyboardist Nick Rolfe adds so much flavor to every song he plays.
The song did have some real peaks, a “Spoonful” you need to hear, the song Tomas co-wrote with Marla Mase “Drowned In Blue” where Mase’s feminine power becomes an island of testosterone, and especially a new song off The Big Apple Blues, I didn’t catch its name “Can’t Say No” . I am such a big fan and friend of Doncker I sometimes feel as though I lose perspective and I might do just that, because I try very hard to be critical. After the show I turned to singer songwriter David Bronson (who promises his own review) and said I thought the three song Yusef Komunyakaa was overlong. “That was my favorite part” was his reply, for sure “Shook Down” and his new trip through the deep South (“Can’t Say No”?) were so great, the latter will blow you away once it is released. It may well be Doncker’s biggest song to date.
Around two o’clock in the morning, Joe Jackson was sitting behind me, Yusef Komunyakaa to the left, James Chance and David Bronson were at my table and this couple walked in and I will never forget the look on their face. That only in New York can this happen look. Only in Doncker’s New York.
Grade: A
