Reviews

Chef Dave and the Blues Allstars – PapaSweenBean’s Friday Night

Written by Staff on June 16, 2024

Chef Dave and the Blues Allstars – PapaSweenBean’s Friday Night – by Liam Sweeny.

It was a Friday night. Not that hot but the still air was in need of a hug. I hadn’t been out. Sick. Tired. Sick and tired of being sick and tired but the point remained the same, I needed to get out and live a little. So on my way to Troy, to what’s becoming my new haunt, Twisted Fiddler.

The gig was supposed to be Fridays out on First Street bocked off, food truck, patio front row seating to a great band, but the sky had threatened to cry on everyones’ shoulder, and without tents and canopies, the music would come with a hundred-and-twenty volt light show, so everything was moved inside.

No matter, though. On the Fiddler stage was Chef Dave. Yes, that Chef Dave of Chef Dave’s Blues All-Stars. Dave bust’s out a blues jam on Mondays at the Fiddler, so it was a treat to catch them on Friday night.

A supergroup here. We got Dave, obviously, Dave Rozier, with a bag of harmonicas like bars of silver. We had Jeff Prescott on drums, Rich Ertelt on guitar and vocal cords, Radioradiox’s Sonny Speed on Keys, Keith Pray on saxophone, and I’m forgetting the bass player and the trombone player. Tag yourselves.

One of the best things about this show as they started running through songs is that everyone was clear. It wasn’t just a wall of sound, which happens with so many players. No it was clean, everybody was in their lane, and it made the songs come out fantastic. They played new songs, standards, and Dave was at ease working the crowd.

I had a hunger for music Friday night, but I had an actual hunger too. So I ordered a Blue on Black burger, deciding on a little culinary adventure.

Now one thing you must know; Fiddler has great food. And the Blue on Black burger did not disappoint. Of course it came with fries, spicy to just the right amount, and with crumbled blue cheese, bacon, fried onion and horseradish cream, the burger was bold enough to steal a pickup truck with a black bear riding shotgun. Great, great burger. Well-constructed.

I started this out not knowing if I was interviewing the show or the burger, but maybe this burger was, in fact, a member of the band, or a surprise solo lick that found its way onto my plate. Such things are beyond my ken.

I stayed around for a couple of hours, a gotta tell ya, I got my fill. Also to be far, I think Karaoke night was a bust, as Matty D was doing it somewhere past my zipcode this time around.

So the moral of the story is that you need to get out there on the weekends. Just one night. Have a meal that your taste buds have to Google, and maybe catch some Dave’s Blues Allstars.