That Time Jessica Hernandez and all her Deltas Gave Us a Sunday Fun-night | Jessica Hernandez Live Review + Britt Daley & Kaleigh Baker | Will’s Pub | October 26 2014

by Dainon Moody • October 28, 2014

Think about the power of a single song, whatever that means to you. Think of the days when you had to wait for the song you liked to come on the radio, when you tried to record it with your tape player. Or getting excited to score a good 45 or even a cassette single. Remember when it was about that? Remember when it was about the one tune by the one band you liked? Before streaming existed? Before the ease of the Internets? How’s that slice of nostalgia grab you?

I’m not even the smallest bit embarrassed to admit the first time I heard of this band was reading the USA Today’s Pop Candy column (which is no longer, RIP). The song I’m talking about was the excellent “Sorry I Stole Your Man.” That led to rewinds and replays, to digging up more on this budding band from Detroit, to a tour schedule and the happy discovery that they were headed my way.

It only took a song, one gem of a tune, one humdinger of a ditty. (Yeah yeah, you get the point, I know.) It’s the same song she led off with; it won an otherwise sleepy Sunday night crowd over in a hot second. It’s a song that sounds like it could pre-date her, however old she is. It sounds like it ought to be a pop classic, and if radio still worked the way it used to, it’d already be boasting that kind of a rep.

I suppose it helped I couldn’t readily define what it was I was hearing, either, whether it was ska or rockabilly or soul or pieces of them all of them combined. Did she come off more like early No Doubt than she did Amy Winehouse? Did any of that even really matter? The more lines you blur, the more readily I’ll devour and enjoy what it is you have to show off. As a listener, it helps keep things all the more interesting.

Luckily, Jessica has more than one good song in her grab bag. She’s got a whole album worth your time. And she’s got a presence and energy that would have lasted a lot longer than the hour we were given, too. Still, what she gave, she was generous with. That meant wide eyes and smiles and nonstop dancing. It meant a lot of slide trombone (something the music world needs so much more of.) It meant the cutest request for a Fireball shot that you ever did see and hear (it worked, too).

Added highlight? When she reached way back in time (1961) and managed to slip some of Barry Mann’s “Who Put the Bomp (In The Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)” lyrics into one of her own, it was kind of magical. And why wouldn’t you want to sing lines like “Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp? Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong? Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop? Who put the dip in the dip da dip da dip?” She added it to the bookend and got away with it. Wise beyond her years, that Jessica.

Kicking things off for these powerhouse performers were the always-entertaining singer and sometime semi-inebriated storyteller Kaleigh Baker, along with local Britt Daley. The thing about Kaleigh that remains a true constant: no matter if you’ve seen her once or half a dozen times, you’re always left wanting. You always want her to sing more, play more, tell more stories. Alas, she was as quick as she was brief … she came, she played, she screamed. She sang, she conquered, she slipped out and was on her way. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am (no really, though … thank you).