Marco Benevento and Mike Dillon Display Their Magic in Tampa
I like writing about the word ‘unique’ a lot. It’s like ‘pregnant’ and ‘dead,’ only more so. Those words do not take modifiers. You cannot be partly pregnant or partly dead (hold your horses, there, medical folks). We get away with saying, “She’s really pregnant” and “He was nearly dead,” but technically those terms are absolutes.
So is unique. Either there is NOTHING AT ALL like something… or there is. We butcher the language regularly, but something cannot be quite unique or rather unique or somewhat unique. It is, or it isn’t. Pick one.
With that in mind, I won’t tell you I saw three unique acts last Thursday (January 31st) at Crowbar in Ybor City, Tampa, but it’s for damn sure they were all very close to it. And it was a great early night with a crowd that filled up nicely on a weekday. The show was headlined by Marco Benevento and by Mike Dillon and the Malletmen, with Lassyu opening. The show was put on by Brokenmold Entertainment, always at the forefront in bringing the widest variety of musical entertainment to the area. And both Benevento and Dillon are part of the Royal Potato Family of musicians.
My first thought upon seeing a young man playing electric bass and a young woman singing and playing electric guitar was: this doesn’t look like a good fit. WRONG! Lassyu’s self-description as a “psychedelic indie soul” act is spot-on. Adam Steadman’s bass provided the perfect platform for Emily Turnage to play some truly psychedelic guitar and sing. She could go from soft to grunge in no time flat. Although the crowd was sparse (a very early show for Crowbar), the duo got a really solid response from the early arrivals. The fit in perfectly, and I look forward to hearing them again soon.
[LASSYU: Garden Variety, Still Surprised, Bring Me Down, You Say Dub, Bicycles, My Elastic Life, Slayer, Curb Your Mudgeon, Lassyu, Anchorage]
Mike Dillon had just jumped off Jam Cruise, curated a massive percussion event in New Orleans, and then jumped on the road with Benevento for a quick tour together. Having beat his hands to shit on congas on Jam Cruise, he gladly switched over to vibraphone. He is, after all, the Vibraphone Destroyer! He also played timbales. Nathan Lambertson is his go-to bassist; he plays both upright and electric and bass synth and had both on stage. Brendan Bull was behind the drum kit.
When you start your set with “I Saw George Porter Play Punk On the Deck at Jam Cruise,” you know it’s ON! Dillon does so many things well. He can play straight-ahead jam, funk your brains out with the likes of Galactic and George Porter, and then play the most stunningly incredible punk-metal-jazz, as he’s done with The Dead Kenny Gs, Critters Buggin, and countless other bands. This show was the latter. That tune segued into “Devious.”
For “Relapse King,” Dillon sang/rapped/delivered punk lyrics while playing vibes and timbales. Then he introduced the first track from the brand new album Bonobo Bonobo, appropriately entitled “Bonobo,” gloriously manic with the chorus “Are you fucked up, or are you fucked down?” They followed that with the second track, “Shit Talker,” and Dillon explained that we all talk shit at some point. Lambertson had a great solo on electric bass.
He then switched to upright for a similarly wild song from Urn called “Leather On,” but we all know it as “The Motherfucker Song,” because that is the chorus, and he had us practice it before they played the song. We did OK with our part. From Life is Not a Football, we got “Cremate Me” with the chorus “marry me, bury me, cremate me.”
Dillon then said, “I’d like to thank my grandmother, Thelonious Monk,” before jumping into “(She Smelled Like a Big Old) Crab Rangoon” (also from Life is Not a Football). To close out his all-too-short set, he played a truly beautiful version of Johnny Cash’s take on the Nine Inch Nails song “Hurt.” Unique? Maybe not, but precipitously close!
[DILLON: I Saw George Porter Play Punk On the Deck at Jam Cruise > Devious, Relapse King, Bonobo, Shit Talker, Leather On, Cremate Me, (She Smelled Like a Big Old) Crab Rangoon, Hurt]
Marco Benevento is a true entertainer. He always puts on a great show. At Suwannee Hulaween, I intended to listen for a few minutes but got sucked — gladly — into the entire set. He and his bandmates — Karina Rykman on bass and Andy Borger on drums — strode out on stage decked out in sparkly gold/silver matching jackets, Benevento in his signature top hat.
They dove immediately into “Solid Gold,” with Rykman on backing vocals. Benevento’s piano rock walks along the edge of pop, clearly demonstrated on “Send It On a Rocket.” And speaking of pianos, it’s unlikely you’ve ever seen anything like the one Benevento has created, its compact size belying its amazing power. He used it for a beautiful intro to “Dropkick.”
“Heartbeats” had some great spacey, dreamy effects and a quick “Tom’s Diner” (Suzanne Vega) wordless chorus sandwiched inside. Benevento provided a medley of tunes from his album The Story of Fred Short, beginning with an old rock’n’roll piano intro and a whistle stanza on “Walking With Tyrone.” “Live a Certain Life” almost turned into a cha-cha, and Rykman knocked out an energetic bass solo. She also soloed on “I Can’t See the Light,” which somehow morphed into “Livin’ Lovin’ Maid”!
“You Know I’m No Good” began with a gorgeous intro with the piano sounding like a player piano in a saloon. Once the band kicked in, Benevento invited Mike Dillon on stage to join in the fun. After that tune, they threw down an awesome Middle Eastern-sounding ditty as well. Benevento explained that the band would have a new album out in September; we heard two of those new songs tonight. And he acknowledged that this was the band’s ninth show in nine days!
They closed the set with “Golden,” which was totally WOW. The crowd demanded an encore, and they graciously complied with “Limbs of a Pine,” which segued into Nilsson’s “Jump Into the Fire,” the revered vocals perfect. Benevento said, “Let’s do one more! This is the best crowd we’ve ever had in Tampa!” And with that, they sent us home with “At the Show,” giving Borger a nice feature on drums.
Unique? Maybe not. Unusual? Awesome? Exciting? You can take that to the bank… after the show. And you can listen to it on this Archive.org recording.
[BENEVENTO: Solid Gold, Send It On a Rocket, This Is How It Goes, Dropkick, Greenpoint, Heartbeats, The Story of Fred Short: Walking with Tyrone, Live a Certain Life, I Can’t See the Light; You Know I’m No Good, Golden; E: Limbs of a Pine, After the Show]
