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Tom Principato Band Brings the Blues Home to Cumberland’s Windsor Hall

by Becca Ramspott

Whether it’s global warming, high gas prices or just plain heartbreak, there’s nothing like a little blues music on a sultry summer evening to groove your cares away. All the better if it’s blues music played by a legend in the making like guitar virtuoso Tom Principato.

Principato offered a rich array of sounds, genres and styles during his Cumberland debut July 19 at Windsor Hall. A multi-faceted musician whose fingers can pry and pick rock, reggae and blues from a guitar fret with equal (and deliberately unequal) measure, Principato left no stone unturned and no chord unexplored, paying tribute to favorites like B.B. King and Jimi Hendrix as well as treating listeners to his own compositions.

Backed by a talented trio that included drummer Joe Wells, bassist John Perry and Josh Howell on several percussion instruments, Principato made the most of the evening with a spontaneous set that wandered from New Orleans to Chicago to Mexico. His warm voice wove around certain songs while fading out and leaving only bare-bones beauty and simplicity during riff-driven instrumental numbers. As a group, the Tom Principato Band was a well-oiled machine, with clean pauses broken by tight moments of complete unison between all their respective instruments.

Early on, the group tickled the crowd’s funny bone with the cynical, tongue-in-cheek “If Love is Blind,” which includes the retort, “If love is blind, I hope I never see you again!” It was the perfect song to pick up the pieces after a rough break-up, with a great beat. Principato also flaunted his skills and showed his love for the Big Easy with several funky New Orleans songs, including “Lock & Key,” which boasted thick guitar riffs and nice splices with the tambourine. Principato also paid homage to Carlos Santana in “Santana Claus,” letting Howell own the song’s success and steal the spotlight a little on the congas.

Principato highlighted his versatility later on during the second set with the original composition “Tango’d Up In the Blues,” one of the best moments of the night, with wandering shimmers of guitar climbing to great heights where you could almost sense Stevie Ray Vaughn looking down on the stage, nodding and smiling. The reggae-influenced “In the Middle of the Night” was another memorable moment, a welcome addition to the mix of rock and blues. The band also succumbed to local fans’ favorites with a little bit of Jimi Hendrix thrown in for good measure.

At the end of the evening, after an encore, Principato beamed down at the crowd and said, “Man, what a great place … we wish there were a 100 of these around the country.”

Well, Tom, whenever you want to come back and enjoy Cumberland’s very own Windsor Hall, it’s waiting for you, with music lovers to spare.

You can listen to Tom’s music at: http://www.myspace.com/tomprincipato2
Or visit Tom’s website at: http://www.tomprincipato.com/index.html
And here’s Tom featured in a recent Vintage Guitar magazine: http://www.tomprincipato.com/vintageguitar.html

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