Paul Kype and Texas Flood made a long awaited return to the stage with Zojo Black, Dec. 15 at the Slice.
The local blues icons have been keeping a relatively low profile as of late, but have been playing a lot over the past weeks. Paul Kype and Texas Flood with Steve Keenan on lead guitar opened the show with a hot version of “I Shot the Sheriff.”
They tweaked their lineup slightly for the second set, featuring Zojo Black featuring Greg Gomola on vocals, Paul Kype on bass, Kyle Harmon on drums and lead guitarist Evan Eushenko.
They played a high-octane, hyperactive set of classic rock, which had the good sized crowd on their feet and on the dance floor including some Jethro Tull, Deep Purple’s “Hush,” as well as Los Lonely Boys flavoured originals. Eushenko sang a twangy ’60s flavoured version of Michael Rault’s “Sidewinder.”
They ended with a medley of Johnny Cash songs, featuring Texas Flood keyboardist Earl McAuley, who joined them on stage, including “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Get Rhythm.”
Texas Flood played a third set of mostly new material, well after midnight.
Steve Kennan sang lead and played lead guitar for several of the songs, while Kype, Stratocaster in hand, kept to the background, grinning away.
They amped up John Lee Hooker’s classic “Boom Boom Boom, and slowed things down slightly with Bob Seger’s ’70s hit “Night Moves.”
One of the highlights was a rousing version of the Temptations/ Delbert McClinton’s funk flavoured “Standing on Shaky Ground.”
Then they got back to their roots a
nd their namesake by playing Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “If the House is Rocking, (Don’t bother knocking.) While Kype sang lead vocals on it, he and Keenan traded guitar solos.
And as always, they played an energetic version of the Allman Brothers’ version of “One Way Out.”
They ended on another Allman Brothers’ note, with a soulful version of “Soulshine.”
