Concert Review: Vintage Trouble @ Lee’s Palace

By: Anan Rahman (@anan_ra) –

Vintage Trouble. (Photo: Lee Cherry)

It was in 1885 when Nietzsche proclaimed that God is dead. Similarly, earlier this year, a figure no less august than Gene Simmons declared that rock is finally dead. While there are those amongst us who wouldn’t be too heartbroken to read the last rites over their copy of Love Gun, the audience who were in attendance at Vintage Trouble’s Tuesday night show at Lee’s Palace would beg to disagree.

The band kicked off the show with “High Times (They Are Coming)”, a turbo-charged gospel number that immediately drew attention to Ty Taylor’s formidable vocal chops. His voice sounded like a combination of Wilson Pickett’s soulful croon and James Brown at his most unhinged, and Taylor wasn’t shy about flaunting his gifts. The rest of the band is comprised of Nalle Colt on guitar, Rick Barrio Dill on bass and Richard Danielson on drums, each of whom are consummate musicians who provided the perfect foil for Taylor’s vocal pyrotechnics.

They culled much of their setlist from their stellar Bomb Shelter Sessions album, and while the album sounds deliberate and meticulously rehearsed, each song’s live rendition sounded looser while always staying satisfyingly in the pocket. Taylor introduced the song “Nancy Lee” as the love song from his father to his mother, if his father had been a songwriter. Based around a sweaty “Who’s Been Talking” groove, the song featured some tasty fingerpicked licks from Colt. “Total Strangers” was all raunchy swagger and machismo, a lurid ode to anonymous love that they propelled by a greasy, gutbucket rhythm.

The band slowed things down in the middle of the set with a selection of acoustic songs that appear on the recently released Swing House Acoustic Sessions EP. As power as the band is while plugged in, the slower acoustic numbers created the uncluttered sonic space for Taylor’s voice to really stretch out. “Another Man’s Words” was a simmering, slow-burning song that really showcased Taylor’s R&B chops, while “Lo and Behold” got the crowd shaking their moneymakers with its slinky groove.

One of the high points of the show came after the acoustic interlude when the band launched into a gorgeous version of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home” before going back to “Blues Hand Down”. The encore included a gorgeous rendition of “Nobody Told Me”, with Taylor bringing in some heavy-duty existential gravity to the preceding. Vintage Trouble finished off the set with “Run Outta You” – a song that manages to synthesize Zeppelin-like slide licks with the rock n’ soul flavour that the band does so well.

Vintage Trouble are a band that exist in the enormously fertile liminal space between “black” and “white” music. There was a brief and glorious period between the late sixties and mid-seventies when bands like Parliament-Funkadelic and Sly and the Family Stone were tapping into the raw, electric energy of rock n’ roll and combining it with the airtight grooves found in soul and gospel music. Unfortunately, musicians snorted one too many lines of cocaine and disco was born as a result – sequin-lined, decadent, and vacuous from the get-go. Vintage Trouble, however, are working hard to bring redemption and breathe life into this underexplored tributary of pop music, and on this night they succeeded.