JSJBF Member Night at the Chubby Pickle
The first Saturday in June marked the first JSJBF Member Night at one of our most active member venues, The Chubby Pickle, with one of our member bands, Jump Back. The idea for this event can be credited to Wayne Kessler and John Dammacco of Jump Back, who both work in the marketing and promotions field. In addition to what we do normally at one of our events, tent cards with a QR code linking them to the JSJBJ website were on each table.
After a brief introduction by the President of the JSJBF, Tom Baldino, highlighting what the Foundation does and the benefits of membership, the music began. The band kicked it off with their own version of one of Muddy Waters most famous blues songs “Hoochie Coochie Man” and set the tone for what was to be a memorable night of music. One of the highlights for me was Paul Butterfield’s “Born in Chicago” with Wayne Kessler’s blistering harmonic and terrific vocals, accompanied by Jack Pic’s emotive guitar that drives the song over the excellent rhythm section of John Dammacco’s bass and Emilio Ramil’s drums. Wayne also strapped on his six-string for many of the songs and has this great effect used on several songs on which his leads sound like an organ. Emilio really shined on both drums and vocals on the outstanding cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll”. Another cover that the band put its unique twist on was Jimi Hendrix “Are You Experienced?”. It stood out for Wayne’s lead triangle, a first for me. Also in this set was the original, “Blues in the Red” which showed the band’s ability to write and perform great original music. Another trait of the group’s music is to mash up songs, and this was done to good effect with “Feelin Alright/Can’t Always Get What You Want” and the especially cool “Theme from Peter Gunn/I Can Tell”.
In closing, it was a great night for live music by the band (without masks), The Chubby Pickle, and the JSJBF community of members and fans of the blues.