What happens When They Give a Good Show and Nobody Comes, Part I: Bill Perry 
at the Grand Emporium
By El Dormido (dormido@hotmail.com)

Better late than never, I thought as I showed up 45 minutes after scheduled 
8 pm start for the Bill Perry show at the Grand Emporium. Fortunately for 
me, the band was just beginning to unpack so I figure I'm just in time.

How ironic, I later think to myself as the night wears on. It turns out to 
be a show attended by 25, including Barb, another habitué.

It makes the place almost a non-smoking environment! Even Amazin' Grace 
Harris had closed up shop and gone home since you can't expect to sell that 
much 'Q among a group of 25.

I had been looking forward to seeing Bill Perry since I saw the calendar. 
He tours the national circuit, records for Blind Pig and, while he doesn't 
have a 'must see' rep, he is an identifiable name among the cognoscenti.

I figured it would be one of those shows where another side of the blues was 
revealed by a well-schooled practitioner with authentic roots.

Well, that's as may be but, with a quiet group of 25 in Midtown, it's like 
that old saw about the tree falling in an uninhabited forest. Did it make a 
sound?

The band had played the Grand in Des Moines the night before to a raucous, 
capacity crowd. I wondered what they were thinking staring out at the empty 
tables and chairs. The empty dance floor became a gulf.

At one point it seemed like Don the bartender was catching up on his 
reading.

All of which is not to say that the performance was not without merit. I 
found a lot to like in the way Bill Perry, et al, made music. It's just 
that sometimes, when nobody shows up, it’s hard for the music to take off, 
hard for the musicians to find a spark. Everything seemed to be muffled on 
that particular night.

The Bill Perry Band has Bill Perry doing the lead guitar work and handling 
the vocals, Rob Gurnow on drums, Tim Tindall on bass, and John Randle on the 
second guitar. Apologies all around if I got it wrong cause I was doing it 
phonetically in the dark. You can check them out both on the Blind Pig 
Records website (blindpigrecords.com), and their own website 
(billperry.com).

The band began with a shuffle, "She's to Hot to Touch". Bill Perry's solo 
builds and cooks, then drops off into a quiet introspective noodling, then 
back to the chorus and out to the big finish. All very tasteful yet 
assertive.

"Going to New York" is a tune played with a 'Dust My Broom' like riff and 
raucous attitude. This is followed by a slow, ponderous, apocalyptical 
blues with a Jimi Hendrix sonic sensibility. Space exist in the music, it 
isn't all sturm und drang smooshed together. There's a nod to Robin Trower 
with a slight 'Bridge of Sighs' inflection at the end.

Bill Perry does a BB King take, biting off and chewing those familiar licks 
in the midst of his solid, pain wracked guitar solo. He manipulates the 
volume knob to achieve a crying effect, hitting high, piercing notes that 
evoke the deeply mournful.

They do "All Along the Watch Tower", with Bill Perry delivering a mature, 
valid vocal that avoids any grandstanding affectation, like, "Hey, we're 
doing Dylan/Hendrix". He does a straight ahead reading of those Hendrix 
guitar lines without slavishly copying the recorded take. Then he hits the 
effects pedal for a fuller sound, edges again into the sonic. All this 
without resorting to sensationalism or the pandering that usually seems to 
rear up when anyone does Hendrix tunes.

By this time, however, I'm feeling that, while this is great stuff, it is 
being swallowed up into an emptiness that our audience of 25 is generating. 
I don't know why, because the music is great, the guitar playing worthwhile 
for being there, and you can still buy a drink.

I'm so feeling the need for that party atmosphere I even break down and open 
my wallet, buying Barb a drink, which surprises the hell out of her!

At this point I notice somebody has scratched my name in the railing along 
the north wall. Maybe not referring to me, particularly, but it's so easy 
to get distracted by all that is not going on, that I'll take it as mine.

They do "Little Wing", one of my absolute favorites, with an arch 
romanticism of one intoxicated with the electric guitar, capturing that 
soaring feeling of the music and the lyric. They end the tune incorporating 
an East Indian style coda.

Another shuffle comes along, "I Isn’t Lying, This Time I'm Telling the 
Truth!" followed by "Woke up This Morning", all of which is to say that the 
band is working, they're not mailing it in. But the place is so dead that 
pretty soon they're reading the posters on the wall.


They settle into "Rock Me, Baby", then run BB through Muddy by segueing into 
"I'm Ready".

The band gets an order of pizza sent to them since Grace is long out of 
there. So it's Antonio’s best sitting in the 'dressing room' during the 
set, waiting them to hit the next break. It's getting so bad, the lack of 
life in the crowd, the lassitude that has crept into the bands performance, 
that I become concerned about those pizzas sitting alone back there.

The band steps off the stage for the drum solo and I begin to wonder if 
there isn't some passive/aggressive punishment going on here, the bleak 25 
hanging onto the show, the band grinding it out. Maybe it's just me and the 
mood I'm in but, at best, drum solos are excuse to hit the rest room, and, 
like this, a long interminable stretch, it's just murder.

But the guy acquits himself well. He slips into a 'Santana/Soul Sacrifice' 
style with a smooth bite to it, redeeming the ordeal.

The band joins in and Bill Perry slips into a slow, meditative solo that 
degenerates into a post modern, ugly clustering of chunky chords choked up 
short.

They launch into Albert King's 'I'll play the Blues for you", Bill Perry 
playing with an open tone with a biting attack. He has a very nice, abrupt 
modulation what with that attack, phrases hanging in silence to cascade into 
cluster of descending notes skittering - those Albert King blues licks 
flashing by on the fly, hanging out to a Wes Montgomery thumb chording 
sound.

I'm looking forward to seeing Bill Perry again, I like him, he's good. 
Raspy vocals. A guitar player with a distinctive style you can sink your 
teeth into. I just hope that some more people show up, some loose women 
looking to dance, some strong men handling their drink willing to shout out, 
crowds of lovers, blues fanatics, gamblers, horse traders, used car 
salesmen, anyone, cause what the Bill Perry Band brings is too good a set of 
music to let die among a somnambulant crowd of 25.

Yeah, it's a mid-week show but if the place fills up for a Dave Matthews 
tribute band on a Wednesday, where are the blues people?

OK, that is unfair cause the Boom Swimsuit Models where there too. But you 
know what I mean.

I suspect it's hard for a guitar player to generate an excitement among so 
few people no matter how good the playing, how inventive the soloing, how 
spectacular effects. Not even shirt doffing and table walking would have 
enlivened this crowd of 25.

And Bill Perry is too good a guitar player, too interesting, to inventive to 
die a death of inattention like that.

So, if a band does a show at the Grand Emporium for 25 people, does the 
pizza get eaten? You bet! But I walk away from the club wondering what is, 
what could'a been, what will be next time.