midnight at the jackalope ranch

Anyone who knows me knows I love to dance, especially to live music, especially to the blues. So, it should come as no surprise that, when I received an email from the great blues guitarist Kal David ( www.kaldavid.com ) that he was playing at the Jackalope Ranch, Mary and I reshaped our Friday night plans.
First, a word about Kal. He lives locally but travels the world with his music, and is a regular contributor to the "Blues Cruise" circuit with the likes of Delbert McClinton. We've seen Kal on a number of occasions playing solo, just Kal and his guitar and his MacBook laying down percussion. In my opinion, he's the king of the gracefully bent note, the seamless riff, the understated wail (I know, that's a contradiction in terms, but it's true!)
But Kal fronting a 3-piece band is a whole new experience: layered, explosive and riveting. He cuts loose a lot more and plays off the base line and Lauri's vocals. While Kal made his guitar sing effortlessly, the base player was all about effort -- eyes closed, sweat streaming, running up and down the neck, plucking and thumbing grooves or channeling Noel Redding arpeggios. The drummer, shoulder-length dreads, a gold cross around his neck, was a perfect compliment to Kal's cool, with minimal flash and splatter, just straight-ahead and solid. Lauri is a natural R&B singer, all warmth and smokiness. But the revelation was Kal, laying down a Stevie ray shuffle one moment or moaning a Muddy Waters standard the next. Hootchie Kootchie Man, indeed.
Now a word about the club. Jackelope Ranch is a new, huge, upscale barbeque restaurant, and the hip place of the moment. It was built by the founder of Babe's Barbeque, and the familiar soulful hog is depicted in bronze throughout the place, gazing philosophically at the ceiling or the sky. Perhaps he's contemplating his fate as a future pulled pork sandwich. For those of you who have never been west of the Mississipi (or the Atlantic Ocean) a jackalope is a fictitious creature created when someone thought to mount a jack rabbit head as a trophy on their wall and adorn it with antelope horns, a humorous exagerrated myth of the west like the fur-bearing trout.
Of course we danced, and of course it was a challenge, avoiding drunken wandering patrons (Where's the john, Man?), the scowling, overworked, busty cocktail waitresses laden with trays of beer, martinis and tequila shots, not to mention the other dancers. But we lindy-hopped without damaging anyone, hit some spot-on breaks, did some steamy blues dancing, zydecoed and cha-cha'd, and even busted out some nightclub two step on an R&B ballad. Listening to great blues is one thing, but feeling it and expressing it with a partner is different level of enjoyment altogether, to me.
The crowd around the tiny stage was mostly middle age and beyond, and really into it, clapping for the best solos, screaming their appreciation, nodding to the beat and writhing in ecstacy. But most of the bars patrons, starting a few tables from the stage and extending out onto the patio, were young, there to see and be seen, only into themselves and their ritualized pairing-off. It's such a privilege to experience world-class blues musicians up close, and they had no f___ing clue. Pearls before swine, and not of the big, brass, soon-to-be-pulled-pork-sandwich variety.