Andy Macintyre & The Primal Groove, Venue 515, Friday 6/25/2010

PHOTOS AND REVIEW BY BUTCH LEITZ

Andy Macintyre and band The Primal Groove rolled into town direct from a 22 hour drive from Austin, Texas ready to play. Unfortuneately there wasn’t much of an audience turn-out, but this made it a more intimate and jocular experience.  The band wailed through covers and original material from Andy’s two CDs while joking about everything from Andy’s amp going out mid song to the ride from Austin to a number of other humorous anecdotes throughout the evening.

Macintyre is known for his edgey style of distorted laden blues riffs, clean acoustic lines, and soulful voice. Taking on all kinds of blues rock cover material that many other acts wouldn’t touch like Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Scuttle Buttin’, A-Mac added his take-no-prisoners approach to fierce and growling tones on his beat up reverse-headstock Fender Strat.

Bassist Christopher “Spanky” Alexander was getting some of the best fretless bass sounds from a fretted bass I’ve ever heard. He also took over vocals from Macintyre on a few numbers. Dummer Richard Lamm’s drive and showmanship was bested only by his creative accents and fills. On some of the pieces I heard with slower intro’s or calmer phrasing, Lamm added some really nice percussion.

Overall, Macintyres reputation as a slash-and-burn guitarist was certainly evident, but since I expected that it wasn’t nearly as surprising as the really nice dynamics the group had. It’s not every guitar player with this kind of reputation that knows how to play “negative space” with some well done changes in tempo, volume, and soulful quiet passages. I was very impressed. I was also impressed when after the break he picked up his acoustic guitar and played a couple numbers solo with beautiful tones and skills.

Next on to Pagosa Springs, you can learn more about Andy and his latest CD “Revolution” at his web site at http://www.andymacintyre.com/ or find him on Facebook and Myspace.

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