Elliott Murphy and the Normandy All Stars ~ 2011 December 15 ~ Club Passim, Cambridge, MA
Band Personnel: Elliott Murphy (lead vocals, guitar); Olivier Durand (guitar), Alan Fatras (drums), Laurent Pardo (bass). Show opened by Scott Kempner who also joined Elliott for a couple of songs.
Scroll down past the videos for review; photo gallery to the right.
Videos
"Take Your Love Away":
"Everything I Do" (the song on which Olivier shares the lead vocal):
Review
Elliott Murphy is another one of those under-the-radar musicians who has been making music for many, many years. Although he has a fan base, he is not particularly well known to the general public in this country. One might put him into the Willie Nile/Graham Parker category; a good songwriter, a good singer, presenting an engaging stage show, and a hard working guy.
Elliott is from New York state originally, but has lived in France for many years, and enjoys greater popularity in Europe than on this side of the pond. One of the benefits of living in France is that he has recruited a very talented band of French musicians. Calling themselves the Normandy All Stars, they consist of Olivier Durand (guitar), Alan Fatras (drums), and Laurent Pardo (bass).
In some ways Olivier Durant, on guitar and vocals, was the star of the show. He played an acoustic guitar for the entire show but got ringing electric sounds out of it. Very talented, very skilled, very personable, a good singer (and had the look). The bass player, Laurent Pardo, was also very good. Something unusual happened with drummer Alan Fatras; because of the small size of the Passim stage, the decision was made not to bring a full drum kit, and Alan played a cajon, one cymbal, and a tambourine tied to his foot. The cajon is a drum box. Alan sat upon and drummed upon it with his fingers, extorting snare and bass tones out of the device; not quite like a drum kit, but when combined with the one cymbal and the tambourine, more than adequate for the task. It was quite interesting to watch.
Opening act Scott Kempner played an engaging set of a half dozen songs, drawing on the fact of being Jewish to create some holiday season laughs. He also came back on stage to jam with Elliott and company on a couple of Elliott's encore songs.
Elliott had a droll wit and led the audience in a couple of easy singalongs. On a song called "Rain Rain Rain" he had one side of the room sing "rain rain rain" and the other side sing "ooh ooh ooh." It worked very nicely. There is one song of Elliott's on which Bruce Springsteen contributed a vocal; Elliott told the story of how this came to be, and enlisted Olivier to sing Bruce's part on the song. (You want my opinion? Olivier was better than Bruce would have been.)
It was an enjoyable concert and I got some good pictures and a couple of decent videos, as well as a delicious vegetarian meal from the Passim kitchen, so I went home happy.
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