Review & Photos | Golden Gate Wingmen | NYC
By Team JamBase Jun 15, 2015 • 1:00 pm PDT
Images by: Scott Harris
Read Chad’s review below Scott’s gallery.
These four guys have been playing music in this vein long enough that they could fake it, easily. John, Jay, Reed, Jeff: they know the territory, they’re all aces, give them some sturdy originals, Dead tunes, Jerry staples, let ’em run wild, crack some smiles, call it a day. But a funny thing’s happening on the way to creating a casually interesting side project: Golden Gate Wingmen is a band, with its own personality, well familiar to the associations its various members have made, but not quite like any one of them.
Technically, this wasn’t their first New York show –the band played a semi-private gig the night before. But the sold-out, sweaty Cutting Room still fell like the first, much-anticipated East Coast arrival since those good notices followed their November 2014 debut. And if up until early in the second set, Golden Gate Wingmen were merely making a good time of things, they finally arrived at a version of “Crazy Fingers” in the second set -later to morph into a groovy-soul version of “Ripple” -that saw everything really click, making clear their full potential.
What’s that phrase we use? “A tale of two sets?” This one had the straightforward first frame, punctuated by Dead tunes -“Brown Eyed Women” and “Terrapin Station” -that served to remind just how this music comes to these players and that they can draw on its powers as a collective, not just a patchwork of musicians steeped in Dead. A cover of Bob Dylan’s “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” was also a highlight, with earnest Reed Mathis vocals to boot. Again, what you expected: all members flexing throughout, with John Kadlecik and Jeff Chimenti painting sometimes near the margins, sometimes in the center of the canvas, no one person owning the stage.
But much later, at show’s end, the first set felt like an an hour-long statement of what they might be able to do and the second set delivered on that promise -game upped, in all directions. Kadlecik’s “Hard Highway” kicked things off with portent, and then came the “Crazy Fingers” > “Ripple” sequence, in which the members held a beautifully patient, all-the-time-in-the-world-to-do-this pace, fed off the excitement of the crowd, and then watched Mathis steal the whole thing: grooving, underpinning, darting around corners, and then stepping into the spotlight for actual, honest-to-goodness bass solos that pulled the groove off its mark and toyed with it a bit without sounding gratuitous.
Mathis is one X-factor in the Golden Gate Wingmen, doing a little bit of everything, locking in with drummer Jay Lane, knowing both can handle a malleable pocket, and also playing the aggressor, at least as much of a lead instrument presence as Kadlecik. Another other X-factor is their slyly eclectic catalog: after “Ripple,” for example, came a new Kadlecik original, “Golden Wings,” serving up a nice dose of folk-rock ahead of the band’s well-worked-through version of The Police’s “Walking In Your Footsteps” that foamed around its edges and then melted into a long jam anticipating, and then yielding to, “Dark Star.”
Give these guys a chance. What you think you’re getting from them is that first set version of “Brown Eyed Women”: straightforward, upbeat, ever-so-slightly messed-with thanks to its inclusion of an aggressive bass solo. What you’re actually getting is the second set: wider, deeper adventure from guys who could pull up way short of where they ended and still have received applause, but went that way because, well, they just can’t help themselves.
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