Music Review: The Big Mighty
The Big Mighty is a four-piece band that hails from Virginia Beach, and is comprised of lead singer and guitarist Brandon Bower, Bassist Levi Pulaski, drummer Jason Neal and Saxophonist Mark Sleister. The four of them together can make some great music that is described as having a jam-band feel, but upgraded to a mainstream sound thanks to the addition of the great saxophonist and innovative guitar sounds.
We saw the band on Saturday night, tax day, at GoodFella’s in Downtown Hampton, which is one of the very best venues to hear live music every week. The band opened with covers of Dave Matthews, and they also played their own original music. They covered Phish and Eric Clapton, and brought their own interpretation to those covers, creating an energetic sound that really kept the listeners dancing and yearning for more. At one point, after the band was coming back from a set break, they brought a cute female fan to the stage and handed her the bass guitar and taught her exactly three notes and told her when to play them. With the fan on the bass, playing the 3-note bottom rhythm, Brandon began to perform an awesome stylized rendition of Dylan’s Knocking on Heaven’s door that continued to evolve, jam-band style, into a guitar wailing crescendo that had the whole place cheering.
These guys are good.
But they are not without their problems. Each band member really likes their cigarettes, and they often smoked during the songs. Its not that I’m an anti-smoking nut; far from it, I’m a huge advocate for smoker’s rights, but the drummer often had an inch-long ash hanging from a butt between his lips and it looked like his face was on fire. The band’s sets were only 45 minutes long at the most, and they could have done without the nicotine if they wanted to. The fact is that they were using cigarettes as a prop, and they looked ridiculous.
The band has another major problem, and that is the out of control behavior of their lead singer, Brandon. Right at the onset of the first set, Brandon had a couple of beers and a shot of Jaeger. He played fine, but he interrupted a song to talk into the microphone about how truly important his lyrics were. It was annoying, but forgivable because they played so well. Even when Brandon mugged for the audience, and galloped through the bar spanking his ass like he was riding a pony, with his shirt soaked through with sweat, I thought, well, this guy is eccentric.
At the second set, I watched Brandon do shots of tequilla, and I thought to myself, “this is going to get interesting.” He ordered a black and tan from the bar and performed a brilliant rendition of the Dylan song as mentioned earlier. But then he kept interrupting his songs to give “spoken word” renditions of lyrics that really touched him deeply. Myself and other members of the crowd were beginning to get annoyed. Brandon had progressed from “eccentric” to “jackass.”
After the second set break, Brandon proceeded to do another shot and have another beer, and I thought that things were going to get truly messy. When the third set began, the crowd began to thin out a little, and Brandon was wobbly on stage and sweating profusely. He muffed an entrance to one song, forgot the lyrics to a second, and then the funniest thing happened. He lost a contact lens. Brandon quit playing, and drunkenly tried to gaze at the dimly lit stage floor to find the contact, and the drummer was riffing with one hand and pointing to the lens with a drumstick in the other. Brandon failed to locate it and just left the stage, leaving the remaining members to perform a jazz rift. Brandon finally returned to the stage, and the drummer had picked up the contact and handed it to Brandon, and Brandon proceeded to hit the wall.
Literally. He had to use the wall to hold himself up, and when he jumped up to sing, he banged his forehead into the microphone. It was around this time that I got the check and left.
If The Big Mighty can keep their lead singer sober and under control, I’m certain that they can be a great band. But if its happy hour and Brandon has been doing shooters, avoid paying the cover charge if you can.
