Public service announcement: If Souled American is playing in your town, see them. It looks like they're swinging through California, then the upper Midwest, then the Northeast.
I caught their show last night in Portland. I had seen them several years ago and wasn't sure what to think. It had been in some rock bar (Berbati's Pan, wow, how long has it been) and they had gone on late so I was halfway in dreamworld. But last night - hooray for early shows - I was on the right wavelength. I sat down in the balcony and after doing a few nervous crosswords, the music stopped and the band started playing. I could feel the universe's frames per second rate change. Slow, deliberate, human, stately, a little incomprehensible.
I had always admired Joe Adducci's fretless bass playing on record, but it's magnificent to see it live and try to figure out what makes it work. I think by the end of the night I had deduced some basic patterns, but I wasn't close to cracking the code. There were things he did that did not appear to even make sound, yet seemed to be crucial.
They had an "elegantly understated" t-shirt that just had their band name/wordmark on it in quarter-inch letters where the pocket would be on a pocket-T:
Souled american
I admire the commitment to minimalism, but I saw myself having to explain the spelling and capitalization choices to normies and decided to steer clear. Kind of the opposite of the band shirts I wear the most, which don't even have a legible band name. And ultimately a band t-shirt should distract from my dad bod, not emphasize it.
