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THE BENEVENTO/RUSSO DUO WITH MIKE GORDON
PHISH FOOD
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Maybe it was the guest appearance by former Phish bassist Mike Gordon that prompted the masses to come see the Benevento/Russo duo a week ago Wednesday at the Paradise. Or perhaps it was just further evidence of the continued strength of jam bands in an ailing concert market. Either way, what began as an awkward relationship between a slightly avant-garde jazz/jam trio and a slightly more baffled sold-out audience blossomed into one of the better shows I saw in all of 2004. The chemistry between B-3 organ player and keyboardist Marco Benevento and drummer Joe Russo dates back to the eighth grade, but it lay dormant until they scored a weekly gig at the Knitting Factory in New York in 2001. Russo, who was drumming with the San Diego–based jazz crossover act 20th Congress, reconnected with Benevento, who trained at Berklee in the late ’90s. Their Thursday-night residency, which is reported to have paid $100 a night, quickly drew the attention of musicians like saxophonist Sam Kinninger and guitarist Eric Krasno of Soulive. Benevento’s style — a wide-ranging amalgam of keyboardists like John Medeski, Jason Moran, Thelonious Monk, and Brad Mehldau — proved the perfect counterpart to Russo, whose playing boasts the maturity and dexterity of Brian Blade and the energy of Stanton Moore. Their subsequent collaborations landed them somewhere in the jam-band genre, as they wrote original tunes and covered everything from Madonna to Led Zeppelin. (A rendition of Zepp’s "What Is and Should Never Be" appears on their self-released 2003 CD Darts, which features Slip guitarist Brad Barr.) During the first half-hour of Wednesday’s show, the trio’s continuous swapping of melodies, bass lines, and rhythms hovered on the cusp of the avant-garde. And the audience did seem a bit confused. But an unplanned set break — thanks to a technical problem with Benevento’s keyboard — brought the band back in a different mood that won the crowd over with a more tonal, listener-friendly vibe. The turning point came about the time the trio broke into a cover of "Foam" (from Phish’s first album, Junta) that featured a brief vocal from Gordon. From then on, the band gravitated toward jazz/funk grooves with simple, singable melodies and fewer experimental tangents. Using a small arsenal of pedals and effects processors, Benevento layered long, sweeping organ tones while piercing the mix with a distortion-laced Fender Rhodes. Across the stage, Russo added color and texture with a host of electronic drum samples. And Gordon held down the groove, embellishing his lines in the high register with his classic warm, round tone. After a version of the "Hoedown" from Aaron Copland’s Rodeo and a guest appearance by guitarist Steve Fell (the regular Thursday-night performer at Matt Murphy’s), they encored with the appropriate Phish favorite, "Mike’s Song." The post-college hippie crowd responded enthusiastically, whereupon the trio catapulted into a frenzied jam and a tight finale.
BY ADAM GOLD
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