An angel sings at The Saint

Sunday, October 12, 2014

We met Meg outside The Saint just after 7 p.m.

Meg serves as bartender, juggler, and inspiration for the Asbury Park venue, and when she told us that Erica of Eric and Erica sounded like an angel, we believed her and hurried inside.

We had come late and so caught only two of the last songs Erica performed.

She was using a 20-chord push button autoharp, a slightly more difficult instrument to play that its leaver 16-counterpart, but she handled it well, and was accompanied by Eric (I presume) on the drums, a suburb and gifted drummer.

Indeed, her voice was like that of an angel, but no so saccharine as to be unbearably sweet, filled instead with powerfully emotional undertones.

I did not realize that she was part of a larger performance until Sean Hayes got onto the stage with the same drummer, and then later, asked her to get back up on stage to sing harmonies behind him.

Hayes, who hails from Durham, was stunning, showing a diversity of performance that made him seem like several performers, not merely one, opening with a performance of minimalist guitar work that was aided by deft and sympathetic drum arrangements, and also well placed harmonies by the drummer at intervals.

Hayes sounded a little like James Taylor, but a James Taylor with a whole lot more soul, and when he decided to rock, the whole room rocked with him.

At one point, he put down his electric guitar and took up an acoustic and the whole mood changed, especially when the drummer temporarily abandoned his skins to play a basic, but mood-rich lead behind Hayes.

The fullness of the duo’s sound was partly due to the drummer’s ability to fill in spaces with his skins that the guitar did not fill.
At one point, Hayes took up a midi, and filled the room with some prearranged background to which he sang alone.

The most moving moment came when Hayes talked about a song he had recorded and released some years ago about a man, wrongly convicted, who had spent 40 years on death row, and how that many after many years, had finally come to see Hayes in San Francisco. He was 92. Today, he’s 97, and the longest living survivor of death row in the nation.

A local Asbury Park band called “The Flow” played Saturday’s late show. The band included bass, drums, keyboard, electric guitar two lead singers and three back up singers.

The guitarist and drummer were over-the-top great with chops that made The Saint come to life, even though for the most part, the band played cover material.

The guitarist looked a little like Carlos Santana, and seemed capable of playing any style, and along with the drummer gave the band real edge.

But the real star was the female lead, a dominant, sexy upfront character that had a voice to match; her range was remarkable, ahs she took on some seriously difficult songs with ease, including a song by Adele.

The band suffered some technical difficulties that muted her for the first song, but once she got started, she was the center of the it all, dealing out songs like a card shark always keeping the ace up her sleeves.

The night also had its share of rude people who in the middle of one tender ballad decided to talk at the top of their lungs. Like Jim Morrison once did at a now very famous concert, she told them to shut up.

If there was anything wanted from the night it was the band’s holding back on any serious funk – even though it was clear from what they did play that they had the chops. I kept wanting the bass player to turn up the treble and really go out it. Also, the band played only one original song, and I would have liked to have heard more.