The Subside bar in Digbeth, Birmingham hosted an intimate gig with Darnell Cole & The Vibe, over from California, USA with his US core band for the first time. Darnell toured the UK previously but with British musicians. The band line-up was Darnell “Big D” Cole (guitar & vocals), Jit “On the Beat” Chatterjee (drums) and Elliott “Uncle Money” Lawrence (bass & vocals).
The band members have come together as a power trio, born in the Blues and raised in rock and roll, with a soul, funk and jazz twist to their sound. With drummer Jit being of Asian descent a bit of Bengali sound filters thru too!
The bands aim is to induct audiences into their Vibration Nation with their catchy and raunchy songs. As Darnell commented “I am so stoked to be back in the UK, a place where my music is really appreciated!”.
Trains seemed to be a favourite of the band along with planes and automobiles, during the sound check, including ‘The Station’!
The set included most songs from the recently released album by the group ‘Life On The Run’ with the title track kicking off the set with a great powerful sound with Darnell’s strong vocals and great rhythm section with the very energetic Jit on drums and the cool Elliott on bass and backing vocals.
The song ‘Straight to the Top’ with its blues fuzz guitar and Jimi Hendrix influences got the crowd on its feet. After a couple of quicker numbers, the next song ‘Songbird’ along with excellent bird impressions from Elliott started with a slower funky beat and passionate vocals from Darnell and then great blues guitar breaks.
Before the next number ‘All Down But 9’ Jit mentioned how pleased he was that India had won the T20 Cricket and with Birmingham having its very multi-cultural population, this was understood even with the England cricket fans!
The other numbers in the set included ‘Journey’ with its heavy blues sound, ‘Down By the River’ with its drum back beat, solid bass and guitar wizardry from Darnell, and the song for the Vibration Nation with ‘Into Vibration’. The set finished with ‘High Stakes’ with its strong vocals and heavy blues rock sound and ‘Take You There’ with its soulful vocals and story about getting out into the mountains.
