from Jambands.com...The Breakfast, The Waterfront, Menomonie, WI – 4/1
Matt Houdek
2008-04-08
After a recent bassist and keyboard change, The Breakfast is currently on the road and hitting it hard with a fresh sound and an abundance of energy, tearing up stages throughout the east and Midwest, making new friends and winning over ears with each show they play.
One year ago nobody would have believed that The Breakfast would ever play in Menomonie, a small college town in western Wisconsin, but now with The Waterfront lining up bigger and better shows based around the 200+ kids who make their residency there, it seems that bands like this may have a more frequent presence. The core of the Menomonie music constituency, a vibe tribe that comes out for nearly every single show, was on hand for The Breakfast and there was a palpable energy in the room. Part of it can be probably be attributed to the fact that The Breakfast had showed up a day early and had been invited down for drinks, to mingle and to catch The Dewayn Brothers who played a free show on March 31.
The Breakfast performance started off with a thunderous version of "Cut Me Some Slack," and guitarist Tim Palmieri immediately set the tone of the night with his ferocious playing style. The band next played "The Sound," and as they weaved through composition-based grooves and intense transitions the jam began to open up into a feedback-heavy freak out as they segued through "Escher’s Etchings II" and finally into a pumping version of "Synergy." The set closed with "Doughboy" and the band steered us through another intense and complicated jam led by Palmieri. The first set was one of those continuous series of music that you forget where the beginning of one song was and if it ever even ended, and where you even begin to question if they played it at all or if it was just a tease.
The second set started off with a nice version of "Psygn," which featured a jam like something that might come from a basement band in an alien psych ward, with strange looping patterns and otherworldly feedback. The Breakfast decided to keep things rolling, as the first notes that followed, revealed that next up was a version of "Reba." Having covered Phish’s Lawn Boy on Halloween at Higher Ground (with Mike Gordon in attendance), The Breakfast has only played "Reba" a few times throughout their recent tours. The band nailed it too, despite a momentary timing issue at the end of “the chase” section, and they blew us all away with the tightness and energy that they pulled off the song.
After that, the band launched into a huge chunk of music that wouldn’t come to an end until the close of their set. Gravity" started it all off, during which Palmieri and keyboardist Matt Oestreicher teamed up and dove into a skat-style jam that included a rap on “feeling harmony in Menomonie.” From there, they segued into an amazing version of "The Grand Scheme of Things" that went on for the better part of 15 minutes and took us all through several layers of orchestrated intensity. A tasty bass solo by DeAngelis mid-song led into a great jam that took off from the bare minimum and began escalating. The energy eventually was released as returned to "Grand Scheme" and finished "Gravity," concluding with another jam accented by a nice bass and drum section that yielded a short and tight drum solo by Tramontano. The Breakfast then invited Dewayn Brother guitarist Eric Nelson up to blow harp on a version of Talking Head’s "And She Was," as Nelson took a couple of nice solos complemented by Palmieri.
The night was a blast and the place was still rocking, but time ran against us and didn’t allow The Breakfast an opportunity to come out for one more song.
You can tell a lot about a band just by watching people out on the dance floor. My favorite scenario, other than pure and unrestrained white boy boogie (which is always entertaining), is when people are just watching the band with fixed eyes and mouth hung open. They may be known as big dancers, they may even want to dance, but what’s going on on stage is so transfixing at that moment that they find themselves in a state of confusion, bewilderment or complete awe: this was a common occurrence on April 1. Hopefully, both The Breakfast and The Dewayn Brothers will be back soon to pay us another visit.
