Although the club has been open for a month or more already, they haven’t been able to start up the old regular music schedule until now because of license acquisition problems. Now, finally the license has been acquired and Carlton J. Smith’s blues/soul band has taken the stage. They’ll be playing every night except Monday, just like before, and the club is also open all day every day for lunch, coffee, and dinner before the show starts at 9:30pm.
In the past few weeks, Jessica Maurer and others have been performing intermittently at the club undercover style. Carlton has been in Shanghai already for at least a month, with the original plan of organizing a locally-based rhythm section, from what I understand. However, in the end they have flown out musicians from New York (including his drummer Joe who joined him on his last contract at B&J) and they will play for the next three months.
They had a private grand opening party last Friday to celebrate the occasion, and I got to hear the band. They’re quite solid, obviously these guys are very familiar with all the arrangements and have been playing with Carlton for some time. The German keyboardist does a great job covering the horn parts on the keyboard for all the soul tunes. The guitarist, also originally from Germany, has a good sound too. The bassist is from New Jersey.
The new place is huge, check it out if you haven’t made it yet! They’ve done a great job with the setup, so it’s great that finally it can go forward.
They’re not coming to play together, but rather in two separate shows happening this week. Swiss trumpeter Erik Truffaz is