The Grab Brothers ~ 2021 August 30 ~ Eastham Windmill Green ~ Eastham, MA
Marc Grab - lead and backing vocals, guitar; Larry Grab - lead and backing vocals, bass, flute; Rob Scott - backing and lead vocals, keyboards; Tom Corshia - drums
Review
There was one surprise about how good The Grab Brothers Band was -- that I had never seen them before.
Given that they are a Cape Cod band, playing most of their gigs throughout the Cape (and playing a lot of them), it's a puzzle that this was my first time seeing them. This summer, when I have tried to compensate for not having seen a show since March of last year (due to the pandemic), I have gone to a number of shows by musicians that sounded interesting but weren't ones I was already a fan of. I saw several good shows by doing this; but tonight I succeeding in forming a new instant favorite.
It's too bad the Eastham Windmill concerts are only an hour, since the dozen or so songs Larry and Marc and their bandmates played were only a warmup. They did some known covers from the rock 'n' roll universe and some of their own songs. In my opinion, the hit of the night was their parody of The Kinks' "Apeman" -- a song they have retitled "Cape Man" and rewritten the lyrics to talk about living on Cape Cod. What a treat! After the show I purchased the CD that this song is on, and I am sure I'll be picking up more of their CDs as time goes by. They've been a band for a couple of decades and have put out several CDs during that time. Bass player Larry picked up a flute for a couple of songs, which of course gave them for that song a Jethro Tull feel. There was a good degree of humor as well as a solid rock 'n' roll sound in their original songs, and clearly the band were enjoying themselves a great deal.
The two brothers, Marc on guitar and Larry on bass, were the stars of the show. They traded off lead vocals; keyboardist Rob also sang a couple of leads (covers of Rolling Stones songs). The two brothers definitely had a "look"; Marc particularly was very demonstrative while playing, although he tended to make a face that was a happy face, not the typical intense guitar player face. Bass player Larry was less demonstrative, wearing dark glasses and playing with a more generally serious demeanor.
This was the second last show of the year at the Windmill Green and it was very well attended by folks on beach chairs and blankets. The shows start earlier as the summer goes along because of the earlier sunset, and as the show proceeded the sky started to get dark. Thank you to the Town of Eastham for providing this wonderful free music series to a community that has been starved for live entertainment for too long.