Delta Sonics at Clancy’s Irish Tavern – 1/24/25
I was out the other night to see one of my favorite Denver blues bands, the Delta Sonics. I would imagine that over the last decade or so I’ve seen them 20 to 25 times – and they are unfailingly entertaining: whether in full band, Delta Sonics mode or the stripped down Delta Sonics Duo, a format they used quite a bit during the Covid lockdown.
This time out, it was the full band at Clancy’s Irish Pub on 38th & Reed a few blocks east of Wadsworth, a fine tavern, usually packed with people I suspect of not being, strictly speaking, Irish – a category I myself fit into.
It doesn’t seem to matter too much as we are always allowed in, and served plenty of beer and chop. The only passport you need is willingness to drink beer and have a good time – which the Delta’s served up.
The Sonics are fronted by Al Chesis on vocals and harmonica and Bob Pellegrino on guitar. Alissa Chesis, Al’s daughter, is usually on bass and the drummer can vary. This night keeping the beat was Kyle Roberts, who also took up vocals on a couple of numbers and did a fine job.
The Sonics play, mostly, Chicago-style blues – think Muddy Waters, Little Walter, James Cotton – heavy, loud, dance floor ready. Mean women, bad men, hard times, back alley nights and bleak early morning hangovers spent wondering what happened to that last $5 bill you stuck in your sock while you were still sober enough to think about tomorrow.
This style is meat and potatoes to the band. Al’s growl is bare knuckle and toe to toe, he’s drinking TNT, smoking dynamite. You don’t wanna start a fight. Employing a range of harmonicas both in sound and size, Al takes you back to Chicago’s famed Maxwell Street, blowing sweet and low or high, fast and cantankerous. The amount of noise and emotion that Al coaxed out of these little bits of tin, brass and wood is amazing.
Bob’s guitar playing is the frame that keeps all this from flying apart. Nimble riffs, chords that unpack like Russian dolls, bends, slides and atomic clock timing, Bob brings the song to the finish line.
That’s one side of the band. There’s another one that draws on the slinkier, moonshine-speckled rhythms of the Louisiana bayous. Warm nights, heavy, damp air, a big ol’ blistered up yellow moon and a chorus of bullfrogs croaking somewhere in the dark night.
This music, swamp blues, can be gathered under the Excello Records label and is best known by songs from Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester and Lightnin’ Slim. A smooth, slinky shuffle beat, a quavery, underwater tremolo guitar pattern, and spare, spooky harmonica shift about like a Ouija board marker. Vocals are usually unhurried, mournful, a little lost, a whole lot worried. In intent, the song is a slow dance on a floor of broken hearts and shattered dreams.
The Sonics often work in two or three Slim Harpo covers, my favorite of which is ‘Rainin’ In My Heart’, written by Slim and Jay Miller and released on Excello in 1961. It hit #34 on the pop charts that year and has been covered by the famous, Neil Young, and the not so famous, Ironing Board Sam. It’s damn hard to do a bad version – it’s just that fine of a song. The lyric is plain and simple folk poetry: “Rainin’ in my heart / Since we’ve been apart / I know I was wrong / Baby, please come home” delivered in Slim’s hushed, plaintive voice. The melody line is supple, sinuous, seductive. There is an underlying confidence in the singer’s pleading: he knows he’s worth coming home to. She has before. She will again. Maybe.
Like I say, a great song. You should listen to Slim’s recording if you haven’t heard it. And you should definitely go see the Delta Sonics and hear their version. There’s a little more iron in the arrangement, Al’s got some Eastern Seaboard salt and flint in his voice – he knows he was wrong but he’s not that worried. She’ll be back.
Bob’s guitar work on ‘Rainin’…’ has more sunshine in it than Slim’s. Bob is a naturally cheerful guy and it lights up his playing: bright, cloudless, breezy. The rhythm section pumps along like the little engine that could and did.
Go see them. It seems like they’re playing somewhere just about every night of the week, often at a couple of different venues, early and late. The blues just don’t stop.
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