Patryk Larney at Rockwood Music Hall

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I so thoroughly enjoyed my first Patryk Larney show (also at Rockwood Music Hall) that I was looking forward to seeing him again. Having an 11pm start time isn’t conducive, so I didn’t think we’d make it out last night. When our plans changed for the evening due to the set before Patryk (covered here), I was happy to push it an extra hour.

Before heading out, I saw these back-to-back tweets:

patryklarney Patryk Larney

Also tonight I will have a listening Holiday gift for everyone that comes. I open the show with an epic sound gift. for real. do not miss.

my opening guest will floor you. like nothing you have ever heard. A world touring musician. i can not mention here for safety reasons..ha!

What could it be, who could it be?

When his guest stepped on the stage, I recognized him. I’ve seen him exactly once before, almost two years ago to the day (12/18/2009). He was a special surprise guest that night too.

Kenny Muhammad is known as the human orchestra. One of his specialties is being a human beat box. You would swear that someone was playing a full drum kit when he’s working his magic. I can assure you that while Patryk had a drummer (we’ll get to him shortly), he didn’t touch the drums during both songs that Kenny performed.

Jessi Rae Waltz (of The Vanity Belles) was called up for the second song of the set and Patryk asked Kenny to stick around for that too, even though they hadn’t rehearsed it. The number is called Filler. It’s a fun/playful song about nothing. While some of the lyrics are amusing, the real reason to listen to it is Patryk and Jessi’s voices, which are fantastic. All of the musicians are wonderful, and Kenny just kills the beats (in particular at the 2:25 minute mark and again at the end).

If you’re going to watch the video I strongly recommend using headphones that handle bass well. If you listen with them on, you can hear Kenny clearly throughout, but really pick up all the nuances when he’s center stage:

Carrie Welling, the other half of The Vanity Belles joined for the next number (and Kenny Muhammad was done for the night), with Jessi staying on stage. Independent of Patryk, you simply have to check out The Vanity Belles, they’re extraordinary. Throw in Patryk’s wonderful voice and the sound is amazing.

Carrie stayed and Jessi left. Patryk and Carrie sang City in the Fall. It was absolutely gorgeous. At the last show, Brian Collazo from Live Society sang it with Patryk. Their version was much more playful, showing off their soul chops. This was a more serious rendition of a beautiful song.

Patryk sings with passion (without ever screaming) and has a very wide vocal range:

Update: I can’t believe I left this out. Patryk performed an incredible version of Auld Lang Syne, in an Irish accent. He finger picked it soulfully and you could have heard a pin drop. Very moving.

He had an incredible band supporting him, left-to-right on stage:

Ben Morgan on grand piano, vocals and melodica. We’ve seen Ben a number of times, including on TV supporting The Vanity Belles. He’s a superb piano player with an excellent voice. He also played MC twice, introducing Patryk and Kenny to kick off the show. He has a mild-mannered touch to his humor, which works very well.

When he picked up the melodica, and blew into it directly (no hose), the place went nuts. So much so that he had to stand up and play it like he was a rockstar.

Chris Anderson on electric bass. Chris was wonderful. It’s hard to say whether his bass play, or his beard, was more impressive. You can judge for yourself how impressive his beard is, but you’ll have to listen really carefully to the video above to pick out his play.

Kenny Shaw on drums. Another great performance from Kenny, though he did get to totally slack off for the first two numbers while the other Kenny was beat-boxing up a storm. I guess that made this Kenny that much fresher than the rest of the band when he finally joined in.

Here’s the set list:

Most of the people that were there for the set before were here for this one as well. In fact, most of them were sticking around for the next set too! We badly wanted to as well. Nightmare River Band was new to us, but we’re fans of Seth Faulk so we really wanted to check them out. Unfortunately, it was past midnight, and we were fading really fast. Lois caught a great shot of Carrie Welling and Seth Faulk as we ran out:

We also ran into Jeff Litman. Mark your calendars (February 9th, 2012) to go see Jeff Litman’s CD Release show at The Bitter End. In fact, go earlier that evening to see Sam Teichman’s Leave a Lasting Mark benefit. This CD will be great and I’m sure the show will be too! We have a huge sad face, because we’re nearly sure we can’t be in the city that night.