David Vest and his band greet the new year with a bagful of musical remedies, demonstrating just how uplifting (and irresistible) blues and roots music at its best can be. Tom Bowler on guitar, Damian Graham on drums, Ryan Tandy on bass, and Dr. Vest radiatin' the 88s. Let the boogie roll on!

As the late John Valentyn wrote, “Vest’s bio reads like the history of rock ‘n roll and blues.” What other songwriter has had his songs recorded by Tammy Wynette and Downchild? He sits down at the piano and suddenly you’re in a Gulf Coast juke joint in the golden age, but it’s happening right here and now.

Vest played his first professional gig in 1957, in his native Alabama, and they still haven’t found anybody who rocks harder than him when the spirit moves. Yet he can turn around and play the music of Dave Brubeck and Thelonious Monk, as he did this very summer at Hermann’s. Whatever music he plays, he seems to find the hidden depth charges in it. When he plays the blues — his first love — the authenticity is unmistakable. As
Katie Webster said when she heard him for the first time, “I knows it when I hears i


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