Miss Tess and The Bon Ton Parade:Modern Vintage

Toad
1912 Massachusetts Avenue (Porter Square)
Cambridge, MA 02140

Miss Tess and The Bon Ton Parade
First set, May 11, 10 pm

It might be 10 pm Sunday night, the work week a few hours away, but no need to hurry home just yet. There’s a little lady on stage sporting a jaunty black cap and a shiny electric guitar who’s got your foot tapping and head bobbing to an irresistable swing beat.

The twenty-somethings who crammed into this tiny neighborhood bar at 10 pm on Sunday nights have grown up on hip-hop and rap but the way they cheered every song Miss Tess and the Bon Ton Parade played, they could have been bobbi soxers and their beaux listening to their favorite crooner in the 1940s. Miss Tess has style way beyond her own twenty six years. When your dad is a Big Band leader and your mom plays upright bass, you tend to inherit an eight bar sensibility.

The Bon Ton Parade perches on their little float at the far end of the dimly lit bar and launches into its first set. There’s nothing old fashioned about the tight trio of saxophone/ clarinet, bass, and drums that make up this ensemble.

The group opens with a mid-tempo swing standard, “Nevertheless (I’m In Love With You)”, Saxophone, upright bass and drums each take a brief solo that puts us on notice that they’re feeling the vibe. Tess’s muted guitar licks are polished, with a lineage that harkens back to Chet Atkins and Les Paul.

Their second CD, “Modern Vintage” is loaded with a dozen originals that have the flavor of jazz, blues, and swing from the 20s to the 50s. They fill the next hour with a heady mix of these originals and standards.

Miss Tess’s meal ticket is her voice. Her supple alto has the smoke of Norah Jones and the playfulness of Madelyn Peyroux but there’s nothing imitative about it. She gets a rowdy response from the audience when, in the midst of her original "Saving All My Love", she purses her lips together and produces what for all the world sounds like a muted trumpet solo.

Tess’s vocals, her band’s coiled energy, and an engaged audience are like a slowly burning fuse. Everyone’s getting a bang out of this show.

The original ballad “Stormy Baby” is one of those songs you inexplicably find yourself humming on the way to work the next day. As she does on one or two other songs, Tess punches it up when she allows her voice to break into a higher register at the tail end of a lyric. The mid-tempo “Pokey McMumbles” gives her sax man a solo that snakes between twinkly Benny Goodman and growly Clarence Clemmons and Tess a chance to dish out another one of those lip-buzzing trumpet solos.

The only song that didn’t find a home was a Tess original "One Rainy Day."  Perhaps more cerebral than swing, it seemed out of synch with the rest of the show.

Next thing you know, Tess tosses an accelerant into the set with “Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans”. Cajun lick sax solo, Tess’s deft guitar picking and velvet voice are organically matched and get the patrons at Toad hollering as the first set came to a close.

So here we are, 11:30 at night, Miss Tess sipping Jameson from a glass tumbler and crooning music you don’t hear on your radio dial. We’ve heard her cover swing, jazz, blues, country, and Cajun styles with smart interpretations of each. There’s a sunshine-in-a-bottle quality to her voice and Monday morning seems a long way off.

First set list
"Nevertheless" - an old swing standard
"Saving All My Love" - original
"Oh No" - original
"Stormy Baby" - original
"Pokey McMumbles" - original.
"It's a Wonderful World" - swing standard
"One Rainy Day" - original
"Give It Up" - Bonnie Raitt
"Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans" - standard
"Train Ride to Caroline" - original

http://www.misstessmusic.com/

Comments

[Lee]

Just love reading the reviews you send. "Tess tosses an accelerant into the next set". Your writing style is whimsical...