Review: Steve Kimock Crazy Engine @ BB’s

Crazy Engine, his new and much-discussed project with the great Melvin Seals, looks on paper a little like another of those momentary, temporary pursuits, but is in execution one of the closest things Kimock’s had to the old Kimock Band ethos in years. The personnel is completely different, naturally — and it’s as much Kimock/Seals interaction that dominates as pure Kimock-as-frontman — but this feels way more than “ad hoc.” It feels like a band that’s growing a bit more every night; somewhat unlikely collaborators who knew immediately they’d make for a measurable whole beyond ace players getting together for a few tasty jams. A one-set, two-hour show at BB KIng’s over the weekend — impressively packed with Kimock vets and the younger and/or curious alike — was, in a word, extraordinary.

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Crazy Engine isn’t quite a Kimock-and-Seals-led ensemble with vocalists and a soul jones. Singers Cheryl Rucker and Shirley Starks only appear for about half the songs, and when they did at BB King’s, they were just as unhurried and comfortably paced as Kimock himself: long, beautifully articulated vocals on classics like Que Sera Sera and It’s Your Thing, and wondrously deep harmonies. That’s why Crazy Engine can shift between meaty Kimock instrumentals like Ice Cream and It’s Up to You and then to soul or R&B; different flavors, sure, but the same deliberately unrushed pacing, a band of six players working out every angle of a song and spending extra time on the possibilities in store before leaving it behind. How else to explain a show that was almost entirely devoid of flabby jams or aimless passages, but managed only 10 songs in the span of 2 hours, 10 minutes?

Between Kimock and Seals came the richest conversations: a trading of dreamy, then pointed guitar licks and syrupy, then sparkling Hammond B3 runs in the expansive Crazy Engine, for example. If there was a singular highlight, it was input (as one, and as individuals) from all four players – Kimock, Seals, bassist Janis Wallin and drummer John Morgan Kimock – who combined to wring psychedelic country rock out of an ancient Kimock staple, Hillbillies on PCP. Rare are songs so aptly named, or brought to bear in such a complete, worked-through, thoroughly exhausted fashion.

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There’s great chemistry here, from the two singers, to young Kimock (all of 19) – who looks so effortlessly comfortable with such intricate and commanding material – to bassist Wallin, who isn’t a “look at me” type of player so much as an agile and immensely professional one. Seals and Steve Kimock – well, their chemistry goes back years and years, and both seem excited to push its potential. Here’s hoping they do; it’s rare that a “pickup” or “project” band sounds so fully realized so early in its life.