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It's the first warm day of Spring, and Nick's Cave is jumping. The usual crowd is here: Colin Fraser, Samuel Coffee, Tom Robertson, and Lenny Christlieb have an exclusive table on a riser along the right wall, just as one would expect for friends of the owner.
Saxophone Colossus is onstage, reinventing Christlieb's old standard, "Strand Road Shuffle," and taking their sweet time about it, too. A swing tune like this is not their usual fare, but Lenny is in the house tonight, and Harry Fletcher apparently wants to knock him sideways and see if he can still stand up straight.
Deacon McCann is sitting in with the band for the first time, and when he steps forward, into the spot light, to play his solo, the reflection off his guitar splashes the audience with shards of blue light as clear and brilliant as the notes he plays. A young man, not on the scene long, but given an opportunity to play with an ensemble that does not fuck around, Deacon determined to play it straight. He had effects pedals, and could use all sorts of technical tricks to distort, magnify, and color his sound, but he would not use any of them---not tonight. That kind of bullshit would not fly with these guys anyway. He started off slow, building repetitive phrases on the skeleton of the original melody, shifting into other phrases of greater complexity and depth... returning to the repetitive phrase with which he had begun, hesitating, but smiling... He played a repetitive chord, looking at the bass player, until he got him to respond, and they fell into an exchange. He began to build on it... lost in it now... he did not know where he was taking it---or where it was taking him... He glanced at Harry Fletcher, who merely nodded, and never stopped playing. Deacon stood in that shaft of blue light, climbing higher in this invisible tower of soaring notes, never once straying from that spot as though he had grown roots... But, his hands moved with such ease and grace. A song he had heard hundreds of times was reborn and alive for him now, in his hands transformed into a new and wondrous thing, he could barely believe it was happening.... He finally turned to his right, looking over at Harry, Malik, and the others... nodding... returning to the melody, they repeated the familiar phrasings, lifting the tune one last time and soaring out on it. The room was silent. Harry told the audience the band would be taking a break and would return in twenty minutes. Deacon had soloed for fifteen minutes.
Nick's Cave is in the labyrinthine basement of an old government building off O'Gara Street, with at least three means of entering and exiting. The main entrance is down a short flight of steps that lead under the wide, high front steps of the building. Under the stoop, another short flight of steps, and a narrow, windowless, black door above which a neon sign reads, simply, Nick's. Once in the door, a steep flight of steps, a landing, a turn to the right, and a shorter flight of steps to the main floor. Along the left wall is a 20 foot bar of ornately carved mahogany, a matching back bar, mirrors, polished brass, green glass-shaded lights hanging from the ceiling. The whole place is painted a dark forest green...