An Evening at the Jazz Café
Fiddles, Drummers, Gospel Songs and Tall People
London is a city of great music venues, and one of my favourites is the Jazz Café in Camden. A tiny yet somehow grand space, you can take in the action from one of two levels: standing on the ground floor, or eating dinner on the upper level overlooking the stage. I’ve never gone for the dinner option, but a standing ticket is usually in the region of £20, which gets you an up-close musical experience just feet away from the musicians. This photo from 2004 gives you an idea of the space:
I’d been to the Jazz Café on two previous occasions, most recently to see the saxophonist Camilla George during the 2022 London Jazz Festival. This time, I was here for the guitarist Marc Ribot and his band, Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog. Ribot is best known for his collaborations with Tom Waits, but has also led a varied and interesting solo career, which includes – amongst many other things – a tribute to his Haitian mentor Frantz Casseus, excursions into Cuban music with his other band Los Cubanos Postizos, providing live soundtracks to screenings of silent Charlie Chaplin movies, and improvised solo performances (I’ve attended a couple of these at another great London venue, Café Oto in Dalston).
Marc Ribot, however, was not the only reason I had come to the Jazz Café this evening. I was also looking forward to seeing Ceramic Dog’s bass player, Shahzad Ismaily. Shahzad is the type of musician who seems to turn up everywhere, often in the background and often playing a different instrument to the one you previously associated him with. There was recently a great profile of Shahzad in the New York Times, which detailed his unusual life story. I was excited to get a chance to see him play.
Being on the taller side, at standing-room-only concerts I always do my best not to block anyone’s view, whilst also trying to avoid banishing myself to the back of the room. This moral dilemma, which every tall person wrestles with, was the subject of a very relatable article by Will Oliver of We All Want Someone to Shout For. Happily, the Jazz Café offers an easy compromise to this urgent problem. The layout of the room allows the crowd to surround the stage on either side, and so I found myself a spot stage right, immediately behind the drumkit. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but I felt that I had minimised the damage as best I could.
With the room packed and the crowd still chatting, the (also tall) figure of Shahzad Ismaily drifted onto the stage in a long black coat and sat down at the drums, which I had no idea he played. Two other men walked on behind him, with one approaching the microphone to say “This is a band called King Speechy, and we’re going to play some traditional fiddle tunes for you!”
That wasn’t a sentence I’d been expecting to hear, and this was the first time I’d seen a band’s bass player double as their opening act’s drummer. Nevertheless, King Speechy turned out to be an excellent band, balancing the traditional tunes with songs by Yoko Ono and Ornette Coleman. The singer/fiddle/banjo player was the very talented Sam Amidon, while Chris Vatalaro alternated between keyboards and percussion.
At one point they played a song called “Daniel in the Lion’s Den,” which I managed to film:
Later, I would learn that “Daniel in the Lion’s Den” is an American gospel song that dates at least as far back as 1829, and was recorded as early as 1927. King Speechy’s version resembles the one recorded by Bessie Jones & the Georgia Sea Island Singers in 1960. (More information on “Daniel in the Lion’s Den” can be found here.)
This opening set was so good, I nearly forgot that King Speechy wasn’t the band I had come to see. Sure enough, Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog arrived onstage about half an hour later, the returning Shahzad Ismaily followed by the even taller drummer Ches Smith, and the professorial figure of Marc Ribot.
I’m not sure exactly how to describe Ceramic Dog’s music except to say that they are EXTREMELY LOUD - even more so standing directly behind the drumkit, which Ches Smith hits harder than any drummer I’ve ever seen. I started to feel sorry for the drums after a certain point, since I was essentially watching them get beaten up.
Here’s one of the quieter songs they played:
Like King Speechy before them, it’s difficult to assign Ceramic Dog to a particular genre. On the surface they are a rock power trio, but in reality they are closer to an improvisational jazz band – Ribot plugs in his guitar and lets his mind wander, while his two bandmates follow him into the unknown.
This show happened to take place on a train strike day, so I had to tear myself away during the encore to make sure I could get home. On the way back, I reflected that small venues like the Jazz Café, where you can get close enough to look the musicians in the eyes, might be my favourite places to experience live music. London is a city of great music venues, and hopefully it will stay that way for a long time to come.
Jealous you saw Sam and Shahzad together! I'm a big Amidon fan, and seeing them as a duo is how I discovered Shahzad, but the last few times Sam's played up here (he's from VT so he plays here often) have been solo.