Wish nets Empress a dream performance
This is how it all went down: A bartender at a small Whyte Avenue pub lamented to his friends over Facebook that he would be missing the one act he badly wanted to see at Folk Fest this year because he was covering someone else’s shift.
Still, wouldn’t it be an amazing thing if Charles Bradley and his band, The Extraordinaires, walked in for a drink at his place of employment, The Empress Ale House, after their early mainstage performance on Thursday? Hang out with the bartender, the waitress and the DJ, maybe listen to some deep-cut soul tunes and talk? A nice fantasy, but not one likely to happen.
That’s when things got a little crazy. See, the bartender’s name is Travis Sargent, and he has some fairly wellplaced friends, like Renny Wilson, a musician with unexpected connections. Wilson informed Sargent on the Facebook thread that he was currently on the phone with the trumpet player, and that he’d “make it happen.” Onlookers might have thought that this was a joke between friends, or self-aggrandizement on Wilson’s part, but nope, in the space of a day arrangements were made and the Extraordinaires, a band designed for small, sweaty rooms, allowed that they’d love to show up and play a free, late-night set.
Calls went out to local musicians for equipment loans, and a bass amp showed up at around 8 p.m., followed by Wurlitzer from local producer and keyboardist Doug Organ, guitar amp from Curtis Ross of Bebop Cortez, and drum kit carried in by Wilson himself. This was the clincher for those hanging around, wondering whether it would actually happen. Empress patrons started texting friends or putting the word out on Facebook.
In many circles, an appearance by The Extraordinaires is considered to be as exciting as one by Bradley, especially given that a couple of members are also part of Brooklyn’s Menahan Street Band.
By 11 p.m. the Empress had filled up near capacity when The Extraordinaires walked in, set up and started playing on the cramped stage, the horns laying down scattershot riffs over skeletal, funky rhythms and organ lines.
Insert your own hyperbole here if you happened to attend. Suffice to say it was a jaw-dropping moment, simply amazing to these ears.
Could it get any better than that? Yes. Pushing his way through the crowd to the stage was Mr. Charles Bradley, The Screaming Eagle of Soul himself. He’s in his mid 60s and had already put in a full set down at Gallagher Park, but apparently he cannot abide by the idea of his band playing without him.
He danced, sweated, shrieked, pleaded, brought the band down and back up again, pulled out every funk and soul manoeuvre he could in a 30/40-odd-minute set that included a scorching cover of James Brown’s Gonna Have a Funky Good Time.
Then, as suddenly as he appeared, he was gone in a cab back to the hotel, The Extraordinaires still playing on to the dancing mob.