Sean TM and the Starboys were excited to play the legendary Horseshoe last night for the first time. They are a young band playing a bunch of Funkadelic songs. They opened the evening with “Play that funky music”, and then slipped into a Bill Withers tune. They played it as a White Man’s funk group and added that spice of Rock and Roll to it to give it some edge. Sean prowled, and moved about the stage like a hungry animal ready to unleash his power at any moment. When he did release those moments everyone’s ears would perk up and heads would turn.
Halfway through their set they changed pace quickly and went into their psychedelic stage by recreating some of Pink Floyd’s Dark side of the Moon. The highlight here was when Juan went into his guitar solo during the song, “Money”. His style of playing is calm, controlled and conducted a fanciful flight of precision that held together the chaos of the other members. The Bass player, Fernando was a solid groove master and a bit of monster of rock. The Drummer Mario simply put up a solid wall of pounding that helped produce the largeness of their overall sound.
The real fun hit when they went back to their white funk sound and did, “Ain’t no Sunshine” by Withers. Then someone from the audience yelled out to Sean, “You’ve got Soul Man”! In fine Rock and Roll fashion the band breaks into Soul Man”. Sean was having fun using the space of the stage, but he became an erratic Wild Man during Soul Man, as he jumped and danced around and pulled of some great vocal gymnastics as he bled like a banshee through this song. Just when you thought it was over this crowd still wanted one more, so the band mellowed us out by finishing the set off with Al Green’s Let’s stay Together”. Sean even got a man from the audience to swoon right in front of him. If you have a chance to catch this act, it is worth it because they looked like they were having as much fun as we were.
Here are a few images of Sean TM and the Starboys:
Opening the show was a young singer named Blake Little. He started of his set very simply but built up his great vocals with each song he performed. His voice has a southern rock sound with a slight growl holding it together. As his set went on, it seemed his voice kept adding a sense of deep rich darkness that added a whole lot of character to his original songs. The funny and amazing part of his set was when he did a faster Pussycat cover, but you would not know it if you were not really listening for it. Just remember Blake Little with the big voice.
Here are a couple images of Blake Little: