ELAINE O’ROURKE, FLY AMERO, Rhumb Line, Gloucester MA 10/17/12
For a Wednesday night, the Rhumb Line is respectfully filled with an audience chatting away. Sitting on a stool under the lights, an unintroduced Fly Amero begins to play and the people hush down. Fly plays lefty with a righty guitars flipped around, making his finger patterns unrecognizable to most guitarists. He’s a master player and has all the skills of a well rounded performer. He slips into “Early Morning Rain,” which he picked up from Ian & Silvia in the ’60S. At one point, Fly stops picking and continues the song a cappella, creating a dynamic build up when his rich-sounding acoustic returns. Elaine O’Rourke enters the Rhumb Line and throws me a happy smile of recognition (we know each other from a previous marriage). Fly squeezes some ragtime piano out of his guitar on Bessie Smith’s “Nobody Knows You When you’re Down And Out.” He tells a story of how his mom was superstitious, and that she passed away on the last Friday the 13th of the millennium, and then he touches us all with his song for her, “PaintItBlue.”He swings uptempo with Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic,” taps out percussion on the body of his guitar, and goes back into the ballad “Remember My Night With You” with his masculine delivery. His Californian friend Rob Bolton (aka Rotten Rancid Robbie) sits in on bass for a few tunes-funny thing is that Rob is also a lefty playing a righty bass. Fly gets jazzy with vocal scatting and then brings it down with the most romantic song ever written Nat King Cole’s “That Sunday, That Summer.” The audience is eating out of his hand.
Time for Elaine O’Rourke to display her new CD, Silence ofTime, in a live setting. Fly’s gracious introduction states her material to be “unique and compelling.” An Irish folky version of Van Morrison’s “Moon Dance” gets it rolling. Elaine’s proud voice and guitar playing leave enough space to let Fly strut his guitar mastery, and that’s exactly what happens when Elaine offers up the title track. Fly adds a new dimension to Elaine’s songs, and she knows it as she quickly quips as the song ends, “I’m gonna put Fly to work.” So you’ve got Elaine supplying romantic melodic tunes with Fly adding the exotic spices to sexifY the night. All three women at my table are fiddling with their cell phones as Elaine hits her stride with her moving rendition of “Crazy”-maybe the gals are setting up their after-show dates. “Blackis the Color,” “My Kiss Will Do,” and “You Are the Light” close the set with Fly getting more and moreintohis accompaniment. Elaine is elated and the audience calls her back. “Autumn Leaves” is her encore, but one more song is left to sing. Elaine announces that a little bird has informed her of a big bIrthday for Fly. She says he’ll
be 30-and although she may be half right, she continues, “You’re only as old as the ass you grab.” The gals at my table seem amused by that idea.
(T Max)
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