Rev. Vince Anderson Live at Black Betty, Brooklyn NY 2/19/08

Rev. Vince Anderson had a rough week. While training in the park for an upcoming road race, the newly svelte Rev. was socked in the jaw by an old codger who told him, “This is for Jimmy.” It didn’t hurt, said the Rev., but it was a New York moment. Recently single, he’d spent Valentine’s Day alone with half a bottle of Trader Joe’s wine and a pizza and garlic sauce that tasted like butter (from a national chain: figures, right?). And his friend was in ICU after the Lincoln Town Car he was riding in pulled up at the curb just outside the club a couple of days before and within seconds was t-boned by a couple of drunk kids who then ran from the scene. These are just some of the things Brooklyn’s best-loved keyboard-pounding minister has to deal with, and he delivered a prayer onstage for his banged-up pal. Unsurprisingly, it took Anderson about half his first set to really get going. But the band took over and got things moving right along.

This is the best unit he’s played with, which is pretty impressive, considering that right around the turn of the century the stuff he was doing had a wildly intense, deliriously fun gypsy rock feel. But since then he’s apparently decided to become king of all keyboard instruments. Tonight in the first forty-five minutes he played blues piano, gospel organ, Billy Preston-influenced funk, and psychedelic Fender Rhodes-ish electric piano while the band wailed behind him. This time around he had a full three-piece horn section including Dave Smith from Who Put the Bad Mouth on Me taking center stage on trombone, plus not-so-secret weapon Paula Henderson from Moisturizer and Secretary on baritone sax, playing clever, devious harmonies off Smith’s straight-ahead blues while a new addition on tenor sax contributed as well.

At first thought, guitarist Jaleel Bunton (who’s also the drummer in TV on the Radio) would be the last musician you’d think would work in this unit, but he does. The guy has monster chops, a lightning-fast attack and the kind of silvery vibrato that a lot of metal players have. But notwithstanding its ecstatic crescendos, Anderson’s music is really all about groove, swing and subtlety. Bunton likes playing up in the mix and was there tonight with some nice natural distortion screaming from his amp, showing off a very impressively thoughtful side with a seemingly endless supply of juicy 60s soul and blues licks. Meanwhile, drummer Torbitt Schwartz (also of Chin Chin) swung like crazy, building up a big woooosh on his crash cymbal during an absolutely rapturous version of Anderson’s psychedelic gospel number Deep in the Water.

They’d opened the set quietly but quickly rose to ecstatic heights with a cover of Precious Lord, Take My Hand and another hymn, along with the propulsively hypnotic Come to the River, which Anderson used as a showcase for the many echo effects on his Nord Electro keyboard when they brought the song down gently at the end after a deliriously good ten-minute jam. They also debuted Anderson’s first-ever breakup song, titled A Ring in My Pocket and Leaving on Her Heart. It built slowly like a long Tom Waits epic: eventually, Anderson finds himself on the train out to Brooklyn, the borough of churches, looking for any redemption he may find. And the song isn’t bitter: when it finally hit a peak, about five minutes in, Anderson sang of how he was thinking about what it would be like to grow old with that woman, and how much he loved her. It was impossible not to be moved. The band brought it down after that with a warm, reflective take of Peace in the Valley, but the crowd, which had packed the little place and had been dancing all night, kept swaying. Shows like these make all the daily hassles seem like a small price to pay for living in a city that may be on its last legs but isn’t dead yet. Rev. Vince Anderson plays Black Betty every Monday at around 10:45, when he isn’t touring.