I suppose it makes sense that people would want to be transported on a Sunday evening. Something about watching the sun go down on Sunday night is like begging your playmate not to go home when you were little. With the end of the weekend and the beginning of the traditional work week at hand, some LA music lovers find their salvation in escaping to a different era. They might escape to the feeling of Elvis’ hips or Donna Summer on a dance floor or 80’s dancing to Pat Benatar.
I’ve experienced this LA tradition for Sunday generation transportation once before when I saw Vintage Trouble at The Tar Pit. These guys rocked me until I felt wild. As the blog says, I was dancing all night and I felt utterly alive as I pelvis pushed and twisted down low with the other Sunday escapees. This past Sunday I found a similar way to transport away to a different generation, but this time I was sent back to the days of renegade cowboys in whorehouses and saloons somewhere down south.
The Piano Bar in Hollywood hosts Brother Sal and his gang every Sunday night and what a perfect setting for this group. Dimly lit lamps light small circles in the exposed brick interior and the bar hosts liquors separated into sections with chalkboards from behind announcing their categories in fancy chalk lettering. Unassuming and quiet (in a calm before the storm way), the piano sits toward the back with a small space for the other band members. Just stepping inside, I already felt like it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility that some of the customers had hitched their horse to a post outside.
I did some reading about Brother Sal after seeing him and a blog I found did an excellent job of summing up his style in two words: “Whorehouse Gospel.”
After reading it, I couldn’t “unsee” how amazingly “Whorehouse Gospel” fits Brother Sal and seemingly everything about him. There is a rawness and passion to his expression, both in his voice and on the piano, that would definitely not be out of place in a whorehouse. I haven’t seen anybody ride the piano (pun intended people) the way Brother Sal does - like he has the reigns of a horse and he’s telling it which way to go dammit! This strength, represented more in attitude and confidence than in actual physical force, makes him a hypnotizing piano player to watch.
Check out the piano playing in this song, “Broke/Busted.”
Then there’s that voice. I grew up in the south and have vivid memories of one of my third grade teachers singing the National Anthem every morning. She was a voluptuous black woman who was known among her colleagues for singing in her church gospel choir. Anyone who has ever heard a woman like this sing knows I don’t have any way of explaining the pure, from the gut, “if you could bottle that I’d sell it” soul that comes out of people like this.
Brother Sal sings from the same place in his gut and his heart that amounts to the thickness I can only call soul. It’s that soul that makes it possible for the band to cover songs from people like The Black Keys and Curtis Mayfield. You can watch Brother Sal’s cover of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” on youtube.
With a niche genre like Whorehouse Gospel, a guy has to have some serious musicians to back him up. Here again, Brother Sal doesn’t fail us. With the combination of Deacon on Drums, Johnny Flaugher on bass guitar, and Shiben Bhattacharya on guitar and banjo (yeah, that’s right...banjo), the layers of music translate naturally and combine to create one big, body moving, soul shaking sound.
These are a lot of words that really add up to one thing: I’ll be back to see Brother Sal on another Sunday night. In fact, I’ll likely be back on Monday night for Brianna Rettig’s residency - she’s lent her spectacular voice to Brother Sal for a few songs the other night and just happens to be his beautiful woman.
For now I’ll tip my hat and reckon I’ll be seeing you all ‘round.
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