Charlie Hunter’s certainly been no stranger to the Green Mountains over the last few years, but he may never have enjoyed himself more than on his latest sojourn to Vermont.
The Frisco Bay native and his two comrades played two healthy sets at the South Burlington venue, during the first five minutes of which the trio got themselves all on the same wavelength. As a result, the unstructured segments of the performance were as interesting as the compositions (most of which were taken from 2007’s Mistico), and perhaps more so; the sound of the band’s music is a direct outgrowth of the threesome’s individual styles.
In contrast to his predecessor Simon Lott, drummer Tony Mason holds down the beat more heavily, simultaneously freeing Hunter to explore the nuances of his instrument and encouraging him to drive more deeply into the bottom register as well. Erik Deutsch’s cerebral approach calls to mind Garth Hudson of the Band in the way the somewhat disheveled looking keyboardist insinuates himself into the group sound. For that reason alone, it’s even more of a distinct pleasure when he plays a melody line straight as he did on “Danny Boy” (yes that one!)…
The leader of the band is the anti-guitar hero. The grimaces, beatific smiles and shouts of encouragement and direction to his mates on either side of him, are wholly unself-conscious acts, never intended merely to provoke a response (though he got more than a few acclamations from a crowd partially-seated and tightly-packed into the small Showcase Lounge).
Sitting down to cradle his seven-string guitar (!), Charlie Hunter snaps and twists notes, twirls lines up, down, high and low on the fretboard, almost but not quite twanging, before deftly fingering those ever-so-gentle harmonics. His fluid shifts from bass strings to the upper registers opened up plenty of space for the band, especially on ballads like the encore. If Hunter seemed to elicit more adulation than raucous admiration this mid-winter night, it’s because he concentrates so deeply as he plays, almost as if he prefers not to be interrupted.
But then there were those moments when The Charlie Hunter Trio propelled themselves forward in tight formation, almost as if to prove they can accede to convention, even as they spent much of the rest of their time flaunting it.
