The White Owls: Blues With Bite

The White Owls
Toad
Live Music 7 Nights a Week, Never a cover!
1912 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02140

With a name like “The White Owls” you might expect this band to be playing oldies in the recreation room of senior citizen centers. Nope.

Last night they played their bi-weekly gig at Toad, the mighty, mini, bandbox of a saloon in Porter Square, Cambridge, MA.

There was Dennis Brennan, singing his heart out with the “stormy, husky, brawling, city of big shoulders” Chicago style that Carl Sandburg would have loved. Brennan's catalog of blues songs is prodigious. His all-out style can pin your ears back.

Brennan’s crew tonight, Steve Sadler (laptop steel), Milt Friedman  (guitar), Dean Cassel (bass), and Andy Plaisted (drums), are no pretenders. They are intense.

Brennan sets up most songs with a growl and riff of his harmonica, lights into the lyrics, and nods at Sadler, who gives the song the sonic treatment of a jet melodically breaking the sound barrier. Friedman captures Sadler’s licks and bends them into his own. Cassel’s steady bass lines and Plaisted’s precise percussion wrap like a vise around Brennan’s slinky, sexy, or rollicking blues.

In the hands of singers and players who feel it, blues has no expiration date. The group of five college-aged girls perched on barstools and Gen Xers, Yers, and who knows what-ers are as plugged into this band as the sizeable group of Boomers scattered about. A few of the Boomer Fems standing in back are grooving as unselfconsciously - and provocatively - as they might have before receiving their AARP memberships in the mail.

The White Owls rip through a bluesy Willie Dixon song, a slow tempo "Blues With A Feeling" by Little Walter, and a growling version of "Don’t Lie To Me," which Sadler, the Alpha Dog of Laptop Steel Artists, plays like a freight train fueled by grits.

Brennan’s quite a sight, sort of a less craggy Keith Richard face, a porkpie hat cocked atop an explosion of curly brown hair. The music comes from some steaming pit in his guts. No stage posturing or engagement with the crowd on this night. Just fabulous covers of traditional blues, sung like he meant it and felt it. No way his sidemen can do anything but bring their own A game to the party - and they do.

Brennan’s been playing around Boston since 1992.  His Dennis Brennan Band plays roots and indie rock, much written by Brennan, at The Lizard Lounge on Wednesday nights. Different style and musicality but the same intensity. His most recent album, “Engagement,” studio and live tracks, met with critical acclaim. He’s already a local legend. He deserves more.

If you’ve never heard him before, check out the Toad calendar for the White Owls next show.  It’s a great way to get your first dose of Brennan washed down with a heaping platter of Blues.

Partial Set list - First Set
 (Dennis didn’t introduce any songs. I could only figure out three of seven !)

I Love The Life I Live by Willie Dixon
Blues With A Feeling by Little Walter (Marion Walter Jacobs)
Don’t Lie To Me by Chris Bell, Alex Chilton

Photo courtesy of Brennan's website

Comments

[Rebecca]

Excellent. Didn't you write a review of them playing at Sally O's
last year?

[susaan]

WOW! One of your very best!! Exciting, colorful, and vivid!!