With lights low and stage bursting at the seams, T-Bird and the Breaks delivered a night full of deep funk and heavy soul, lighting up Antone’s dark stage and letting the old walls breathe a breath from its younger days. It’s hard not to think of the glory days of the “big band” when T-Bird and The Breaks hit the stage, T-Bird himself a talented, magnetic and charismatic song leader with a nine-person, symmetrically mirrored scale of soul machine occupying those forty square feet of plywood around him. T-Bird himself isn’t the only talented one, however, as the entire band was a cohesive group – horn section challenging the backup singers who are firing back like sexy, black-dressed sirens, horribly well choreographed in their dancing; drums and bass creating a smooth groove line while T-Bird and guitar hit a funky back-and-forth rapport. T-Bird and the Breaks are a fast, high energy engine that got the crowd moving around and got them there fast. The sound was contemporary rock and roll’s answer to the glory days of jazz and funk and soul — a revamped, remodelled classic car that takes the best of yesterday and today to make something brilliant and beautiful. The set was strong, the band was tight and in synch, and it was evident early on that the night wasn’t about an opening band and a closing band, but about talented musicians coming together and putting on a great show.
After T-Bird and the Breaks knocked the crowd down, the rock-tejano-conjunto hybridization of a jam band, Brownout, took the stage to pick everyone back up. Trumping T-Bird’s band in numbers by one, Brownout, with their menagerie of horns and various drums and guitars mixing up across the stage took the strong-silent approach in their set, rarely busting out the lyrical guns, and when voices were heard they were rarely in english. Not that I’m complaining. The best thing about Brownout, I think, is that I can’t place them. By that I mean I’ve never heard anything like the tight, talented, towering, trembling sound quaking out of their amplifiers. The band left me torn on whether to call is Psychedelic Conjunto, or Funk-Rock Tejano or some other juxtaposed genre I can’t even think of. What was certain, however, is that the crowd was moving from the very first guitar licks and didn’t stop for a moment.
Both T-Bird and the Breaks and Brownout have that sweet taste of Austin in their music, that kind of thing that doesn’t necessarily make sense on paper but sounds great in your heart. Strong sets from a couple of genre-bending big bands. Couldn’t ask for a better night out in Austin.
–Mitchell Mazurek