Stop Making Sense: A Tribute to Talking Heads featuring Row Jomah
By Scott Hopkins on September 30, 2018
Stop Making Sense: A Tribute to Talking Heads featuring Row Jomah
Mark your calendars now for October 13th. That is the Saturday evening when “Stop Making Sense: A Tribute to Talking Heads” featuring Row Jomah comes to Crowbar. Also included in this very Halloween-ish affair will be Future Vintage, Reality Asylum, DJ SugarBear, and Blassafrass. Bungalow Entertainment is presenting this special show at Crowbar in Ybor City (Tampa). Make your plans now for the biggest, baddest ’80s Halloween theme party you’ve ever seen — costumes, ’80s music, ghoulish fun, and a Crowbar jam-packed with your musical family!
Row Jomah is an outstanding band from Clearwater with two studio albums and a live release to their credit. Row Jomah are: Dylan Chee-A-Tow, drums, percussion; Austin Llewellyn, keyboards, piano; Joe Roma, vocals, acoustic guitar; and Melbourne Walsh, electric guitar.
Austin Llewellyn — photograph courtesy of Nymania Productions
For years, several Talking Heads songs have made their way into Row Jomah setlists. Last March, at Dunedin Brewery Spring Beer Jam, the band first presented “Stop Making Sense.” It was a spectacular success; the band was augmented with three excellent musicians: Miss Robyn Alleman (Holey Miss Holey), vocals; Dave Gerulat (shoeless soul), vocals, percussion; and Vinny Svoboda (Displace), bass. They repeated the set recently at WMNF’s US Festival tribute and look forward to this round three of great ’80s vibes and music. For this performance, they have also added Michael Lyn Bryant (Follow the Monarchs, Skallop), synths.
Dylan Chee-A-Tow — photograph courtesy of Nymania Productions
At the DunBrew Spring Beer Jam, we wrote:
Putting together a tribute to a particular iconic band is a huge undertaking. You can either play around the edges and interpret, or you can go for precision. I’d seen several excellent tributes to Talking Heads at festivals, but none was better than what Row Jomah offered to open Friday’s ceremonies.
Joe Roma and band have always kept several Talking Heads tunes in their great repertoire, but this meant taking on more than a dozen of the band’s songs, most well known and a couple of gems included as well. The band was well up to the task. Now to secure the vocals. Roma first recruited Dave Gerulat, an oft-time collaborator who plays with shoeless soul, and his percussion was a nice side benefit.
Joe Roma — photograph courtesy of Nymania Productions
The icing on the vocal cake came in the form of the lady in black, Miss Robyn Alleman, wonderful singer with Holey Miss Moley, local funk juggernaut. The trio of voices pushed this superb set over the top. Roma commented, “The music is not that difficult; the vocals are very challenging.” Challenge met! Alleman added, “The Talking Heads set was one of the best things I’ve been involved with musically.”
Joe Roma, Miss Robyn Alleman and Dave Gerulat — photograph courtesy of Nymania Productions
Everyone there would agree. The courtyard was jam-packed with fans dancing, smiling, singing, and loving the set. Of course they began with “Psycho Killer!” When they got to “Slippery People,” they invited Mike Bryant up to do his Bernie Worrell synthesizer thing (Bernie played DunBrew in 2014). Mel Walsh had an excellent guitar solo as well.
And let’s not forget Vinny “Tina Weymouth” Svoboda, replete with blond wig (which did not match the beard). Svoboda has worked often with Row Jomah as recording engineer and bassist; he plays with Displace, who would follow the TH tribute.
Vinny ‘Tina Weymouth’ Svoboda — photograph courtesy of Nymania Productions
“Take Me to the River” had that perfect cadence, and the vocal harmonies from Roma, Alleman, and Gerulat were off the charts (all night). Keyboard master Ike Stubblefield, one of the weekend’s main guests, sat in on “Girlfriend is Better.” We got lots of drummer Dylan Chee-A-Tow in “The Great Curve,” and Walsh had another fine solo on “Once in a Lifetime.” Austin Llewellyn was magic on keyboards all set, especially on “Naive Melody.”
The much-anticipated “Life During Wartime” had an interested cadence, great dancing from the band, and Llewellyn on melodica. Bryant returned for “Making Flippy Floppy.” The great uptempo set closed, as you might anticipate, with “Burning Down the House” (well, in this case, the courtyard tent). Joe Marcinek, another of the weekend’s featured artists, joined in on a fabulous encore of “Crosseyed and Painless.”
SPECTACULAR!
Future Vintage are a full-on dance party disguised as a jamtronic trio. The St. Petersburg band serves up a delicious blend of electronica, disco, funk, rock and more, full of great original material and well-chosen covers. Future Vintage are: Matt Giancola, keyboards, guitar, vocals; Trevor McDannel, bass, synth bass; and Eric Layana, drums, electronic drum pad.
Future Vintage — photography courtesy of Mandi Nulph
Reality Asylum will send your brain back to the ’80s as well. Think Devo, The Flying Lizards and lots of punkish new wave, and you’ve got Reality Ayslum. Their synth-punk has electrified crowds all over the area. Reality Asylum are: Lauren Elizabeth, vocals; Seth Gilbert, drums; and Ricky Seebach, analog synths, digital hardware.
Reality Asylum
Andrew M. Blass, a.k.a “Blassafrass,” is a Tampa native “bass maker,” vinyl turntableist, selector, and post-processor producer [collector + practice (dedication * sacrifice) = selector]. Blass is one half of the local vinyl duo the Savage Scratch Kids and is an outspoken proponent of open minds, free love, and the low-end.
Blassafrass
DJ SugarBear will also be in the house (or out in the beer garden), spinning“a blend of new wave/no wave electronic darkness for you to get wild to.”
Get those costumes ready. It’s party time!Doors open at 9 pm.
