Cosmic Ray brought along a whole host of friends for a friendly jam session to the Gladstone hotel. The place was filled with friends and family and people wandering off the street to see what the noise was all about. A wall of noise would describe this Friday evening. It was filled with loud, rough and rowdy blues songs. They would have done a lot better if they had a bigger venue.
Cosmic Ray could have fine tuned his mike a little cleaner sound, instead of trying to compete with a bunch of rabble rousers taking over the stage. His vocals had a bit of a Stevie Ray Vaughn vibe to it. This is if you smoked and had a whiskey soaked gargle added to your character, but his voice would get lost in space now and again.
His band and guest consisted of Cosmic Ray, who gives us his peace and love. This New Yorker truly loves coming up to Toronto to entertain the frosty people.
Frank Consentino
Em Jay
Sugar Brown
Bennett Young
Walter McLean
Aaron Kozmer
Josh Gordon
There was a lot of consultation between songs, to see what key they were playing and who would take the leads. Now this is a true jam session trying to bring on board many new musicians to help Cosmic Ray to grow as a band and spread his version of the blues all over, even though when they made mistakes, things were forgiven and a chuckle could be felt. This was music in the raw. They all played with heart, warts and all.
They ran through some classic 60’s blues like, Little Red Rooster, Red House, Tobacco Road, The Thrill is gone, and even slid in a Tom Waits song, Get behind the Mule.
Half the fun was watching the high energy Cosmic Ray throwing out his freedom to his audience. He worked very hard to keep us happy, with his herky jerky movements.
If you enjoy the blues, check out his sound at… https://soundcloud.com/cosmicblues?fbclid=IwAR1aJaT8dWZo1Wc9fkUcawTecaQNS5YgLDPYttU6yapg4rJJpYVTylRj0Uw
If you are in the Queen and Dufferin area, see what is playing at the Gladstone Hotel… https://www.gladstonehotel.com/?fbclid=IwAR2kHutlwdNzWGTY1Sjb3OInj84U5W36N-Y9fm46kbQSJIO-AH8JEMbNYR8
Here are some images from the performance: