http://blogs.mcall.com/lehighvalleymusic/2009/08/groovy-like-a-fox.html
Groovy Like A Fox
Lehigh Valley Music Blog
8-1-09
By Michael Duck
My first night of Musikfest 2009 was off to an inauspicious start. After wandering around in the rain for the first half hour, I then managed to slosh through a few puddles down at Festplatz and soaked my shoes right through to my socks. My feet were still damp and getting itchy three hours later when I schlepped my way back up to Main Street to check out the Three Legged Fox show.
And then my night turned around.
“Are you guys feeling good?” asked lead singer and rhythm guitarist Kyle Wareham, breezily tossing the question to the growing crowd on Main Street. “Is it sounding good or what?”
It did indeed sound good. Musikfest’s Main Street stage is a tricky venue: The audience has to stand, there’s no shelter from the elements, the stage is tiny and the acoustics are often iffy. But it does get a tremendous amount of foot traffic, and Three Legged Fox’s infectious reggae-roots-rock had soon attracted an audience of all ages — from toddlers to teenagers to seniors — that filled the street and extended well into the sidewalk on the other side.
“We’re trying to get everyone rocking as hard as this little girl,” Wareham said, indicating an adorable toddler dancing in the front row. The band’s music, driven by Kory Kochersperger’s powerful and inventive drumming, soon had all the toddlers up and grooving — along with their parents.
Rounding out the band are bassist Eric Weisenstein and lead guitarist Mike Brody. Weisenstein’s funky basslines nestled between the guitars and drums, gluing the ragged reggae beats together; Brody’s guitar work showed off his speed and his chops with effects pedals, but he was at his best when his licks answered and interplayed with Wareham’s vocal melodies.
Yesterday morning I described the Philly-area band as “Rob-Thomas-meets-Matisyahu,” which turned out to be pretty close. Wareham’s vocals have an earnest, sometimes breathy quality that evokes Thomas; the band, like Thomas, is also adept at crafting songs around snappy pop hooks. But rather than Thomas’ straightforward pop-rock, the foundation of the band’s sound is a Matisyahu-style rock-reggae that also incorporates the Hasidic singer’s intensity — and his facility at slipping snippets of rap into the music.
Beyond merely grooving or rocking, the band repeatedly surprised me with sharp left turns in mid-show. After a few mellow songs would lull me into thinking they were channeling Jack Johnson, Wareham snapped me back to attention with a burst of hard-rocking intensity. Just when I had begun to write off the song “Slow Down” as merely straightforward pop-rock, the band launched into a brilliant bridge that rips the song’s sonic elements apart and then smashes them back together.
Another highlight was the band’s inspired, reggae-fied cover of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb,” which started out nearly unrecognizable but soon had some audience members singing along and holding aloft their illuminated Musikfest mugs. (“This is the cosmic portion of our show,” Wareham had quipped in his introduction.)
It wasn’t until several songs later when a revelation finally hit me: Three Legged Fox’s performance had been so riveting that I had completely forgotten about my wet, itchy feet.
And that pretty much made my night.
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