Downtown Macon was awash in holiday lights tonight. There was a chill in the air — which kept the drunk frat partiers off the streets — and the music at Roasted Cafe on 2nd Street — where I spent most of the evening — was spot on: my idea of a perfect first Friday.
While I couldn’t stay for the later acts at Roasted, I got to hear — and thoroughly enjoy — Clark Bush and DJ Roger Riddle’s sets while sipping craft beer, and taking in Willie Dantzler’s expressive, mixed-media works hanging on the walls.
I’ve loved Clark’s savvy reworkings of eclectic tunes and original compositions since I first heard them nearly two years ago, but this was the first time that I got to hear them performed in live. If you don’t live in Macon, it’s impossible to overstate Clark’s importance to the creative music scene. To the touring bands that he brings through, the bands he mixes at shows around town, and even to some musicians in Macon, Clark is probably best known as a sound engineer and promoter, but his skills as a musician, and his impeccable taste as an arranger are top notch, and never cease to amaze me.
Clark spent most of the set hovering over paperback-sized sampler, patching in beats and fragments of song with a touch of the finger, while twisting volume and tempo knobs to perfect a groove. I love his cleaver re-workings of songs by artists as divergent as Joanna Newsom, Sun Ra, and Pharoah Sanders, but my favorite track of the evening seemed to blend all of these elements together along with a ’90s hip-hop sample and a sped-up vocal freestyle by the very talented Macon artist, Ben Vance. Most of the music he covered can be found on his great album from 2010: An History of the Album. If you haven’t heard it, I highly suggest that you download it for free here.
After strolling down for a bite at Greek Corner deli, and checking out a hip-hop vocal group performing on the corner of Cherry Street and 2nd, I headed back in time to catch Roger Riddle’s great set of music. Roger has awesome taste, and the ability that great DJs have to perfectly pace a set of music to get and keep people on their feet and dancing. Mixing nineties staples by the Fugees and even a sample of an Eminem tune with classic soul strains from James Brown and Bill Withers, Roger kept the multi-generational crowd smiling and on their feet.
Check out Roger’s great website with downloadable playlists here.
tuneOUToptIN 