Wow! Somebody flipped the script on this one. I saw Marion Meadows in 2004 at an outdoor concert right after our legendary month of hurricanes. It was at an outdoor shopping and restaurant area and most people were there because it was an NFL Sunday and their power was out at home. Under gloomy skies with a continual drizzle dampening the enthusiasm of even the die-hards that sat in front of the stage, Meadows and his band delivered a solid performance against some pretty heavy odds. He even got a few folks outta their chairs. But it was basically a smooth jazz show, heavily driven by rhythm, romance and groove. Four years later, again in the rain, this guy kicked it from a whole 'nother side of the fence adding hefty amounts of rock, pop, funk and the kind of contemporary jazz we used to get before things got smoothed out. Rohn Lawrence stepped to the center of the stage and whammied the crowd with searing Jeff-Beck style guitar solo. That's the way they let us know "It's on now and we're just getting started!" Through this whole set the energy just got higher and higher.

I own all the songs that Meadows played that night but I didn't recognize most of them in their pumped up live revisions. It seemed like the original melodies had become base themes for the players to take off from.

Anyone who is familiar with his music would recognize these sonic threads but in that way that you do when you just can't quite figure out what song that is. This four man band - Lawrence on guitar, keyboardist Will Brock, Chip Sheavin on bass and drummer Jabari - created one big wall of sound for Meadows to fill out in front or merge with the mix as the dynamics of the songs shifted. He has become a master at that too, knowing just when to step back and let it flow and when to step up and push it another notch. The guitar solo that brought the band on stage, Meadows stylin' in a shirt with lots of glitz for the lights to hit, shredded right through the opening lines of "Dressed to Chill."  Take the basically elegant melody line of the album version, speed it up, add a thicker beat and turn those subdued notes as loud and powerful as a soprano sax can get. That's the live version, which segued into a spirited revision of the already uptempo "Tales of a Gypsy." "Treasures" took it up another notch with Rohn Lawrence sitting on one end of the stage with an amp behind him and a monitor speaker in front, surrounded by the notes he was playing and just searing through another solo that brought the rockers in the crowd to their feet while the sound of the band got bigger and thicker and Meadows' sax just melted into it.

"Come Together" has almost become a standard for bands trying to prove that they can do more than "smooth jazz." This band had proven that long before the song started but he delivered a tight take, sitting on the edge of the stage teasing the crowd that had gathered with splashes of notes and urging them to sing along. "South Beach" got them dancing with its tropical groove and shimmering keyboard textures that morphed into a gritty funk showcase that was just plain fun - both entertaining and a good schooling for the folks in the crowd who missed it the first time around. He and the band worked fragments of some big time classic funk songs into Meadows' narration as he talked about growing up and how he first heard George Clinton, Issac Hayes, The Ohio Players and the others that would become so influential. "Suede" was soft and graceful, giving the crowd a breather before the dance-a-thon that "Sweet Grapes" became. By now the rain had started up again but people were too into the music to think about running for cover. More rain did send a few to their cars at the end of the set but the rest of us were screaming for more, which they delivered with a combustible take on the chill flavored "Diggable" that gave Jabari a chance to go off on his drum kit.

Throughout the show Meadows was the complete entertainer, he had star-presence as he worked the stage and the crowd. The band was right there with him, animated, charismatic and letting their personalities show inside the music. He talked about this being the East Coast sound and how there was no more holding back and playing soft and safe. If this is where the East Coast guys are going I'm glad to be on this side of the country and waving that flag. This was one of those so-called smooth jazz gigs that turned out to be a rock concert where nobody sang and it meshed perfectly with the casual Florida vibe in a city where people want to rock, like to dance, and just love to get funky.