A Slam for all seasons

Way south of the border, eons before the invention of air-conditioning and the discovery of freon to chill things out, folks around the equatorial ring knew how to keep their cool, when things got hot, by getting into something hotter. Eating food so spicy it flames the mouth makes a 100-degree temperature outside the burning bod seem temperate, and drum-driven workouts, keyed up by whatever instruments, induce a natural sauna-effect.

On the run from heat that sat on the chest like the fat kitty of the whole Catskill range, we drove the mountain ridgeline south, Friday night, hunting the Slam Allen Blues Band, a trio that's a sure sauna thing. It was a best-the-heat quest based on abiding knowledge of the band's sound, experienced last June at Tinker Street, and a rumor that they were holed up for the night in New Paltz at an off-course club, the Fore Seasons Cafe.

Upon renewed acquaintance, the Slam of memory remains a one-man, new-blues movement out of Monticello-the trotting town north of Manhattan, not that presidential plantation in Virginia. Slam's a one-man band within a trio including DeWitt on bass, and drummer Mike Moss, and he's the one man to steam heat to death.

Slam Allen pops guitar notes off his own groove like drops of water on a red-hot griddle. He sings the blues he writes, relevant to the trials and loves of a young man, talking back to himself, or making his point one more time and better, on his guitar.

Separate from and equal to Slam's gift for picking a rainbow of notes around a line -- notes that pop instead of sliding and whining -- is his power laying out a groove. In locomotive segues from song to song, he just picks up the room, bear-hugs it along into the next funk tempo, all his numbers riding a pulse, cooked slow or rolling out good times.

Where, you ask, since the blues needs new blood so bad, has Slam Allen been all his life? Playing backup in his daddy's rhythm and blues band, The Allen Brothers, featuring former Wilson Pickett All-Star, Uncle Buddy. Slam joined the band on traps when he was five, moving up to rhythm guitar. Living music at home and on the road, songs came last. Drummer Moss heard him at a jam in Manhattan a little over a year ago and ran on the stage. "Slam," he said, "We've gotta be a band!" The "gotcha" intimacy and joy in Slam's play-no act- effects strangers like that. Polite, shy off the set among strangers, he's into your heart in an instant, confident and happy at the fact.

Second to the shock of air-conditioning in the Fore Seasons was the presence of a spectacled bass player, DeWitt, who has replaced a two-tone warrior of funk named Lee, who played with Slam at Tinker Street. DeWitt, who was a child actor in Joe Papp's Shakespeare productions and toured as bass player with C.C. Coleman, brings another kind of force to the trio. Not so's you'd notice, but his subliminally inventive bass line, at the jazz edge, carries underneath Slam's dance of notes like a lava flow.

Moss drives and rides the rhythm tiger, here. Over a piece of ice-cream birthday cake, he confesses multiple influences of the Jones boys-Elvin and Philly Joe. The truth is he's a born ecstatic, and Slam and a trap set let him celebrate his aura.

Fame for Slam, the blues light of this band just out from under a bushel -- call it school, call it dues-is inevitable. Risen from true root music with his own spontaneity of style, he's a revolution back to the source, the ecstasy and the agony of the blues.

On Friday, August 25, the Slam Allen Band will return to Tinker Street and carry survivors across town to Howie Brown's blues gig at Callahan's. Mark your calendars. ++

Cat Ballou
Woodstock Times
July 20, 1995