By Andrew Poretz***Manhattan is home to some of the best jazz music venues in the world, with Brooklyn coming on as a close second. But there’s long been a dearth of great jazz rooms outside of the city. That’s been changing recently, with terrific venues popping up and attracting major talent. One new addition is Westchester’s Jazz on Main, in Mount Kisco. This intimate supper club opened in July and has a diverse offering of excellent performers on the schedule, including the great Allan Harris, the Alexis Cole trio, and the Anais Reno Quartet. 
This reporter felt it would be “worth the schlep” to experience Jazz on Main. With a personal favorite, Peter Calo, on the bill for November 19, I made the trek north on the Metro North Railroad from Harlem—and it was completely worth it.
The supper club is a short walk from the station, across Main Street. It’s not actually on Main (just as Jazz at Lincoln Center is not at Lincoln Center), but on South Moger Avenue, hidden within an enclave of shops. A small stage is to the left of the entrance, while a long bar with about 15 seats takes up most of the right side of the room. The open sound booth at the back faces the entrance. Owner Shaul Dover, known for his successful recording studio in Katonah, told me he designed the space to have a retro feel, with an emphasis on great sound and lighting, all of which he designed and operates every night as a one-man tech crew. The signature element is a pyramid-like triangle that seems to be everywhere: in the logo, in the bar front lattice, and even in the orientation of the middl
e rows of tables. The menu has a pricey but compelling prix fixe menu on the left, and salads and appetizers on the right. The terrific, reasonably priced salad with grilled chicken was quite good.
Canadian-born Peter Calo is an excellent and versatile guitarist with a terrific tenor voice. He first came to this reviewer’s attention as Lorna Luft’s guitarist at 54 Below last April. His own show four weeks later was excellent. He is perhaps best known for his work with Carly Simon and Jimmy Webb.
Calo is a gregarious, tall and handsome fellow with a full head of gray hair. You might mistake him for a cop (as played by a Baldwin brother) before he picks up his guitar. He was accompanied by Gary Schreiner on piano, accordion and chromatic harmonica; Malcolm Gold on bass; and John Bollinger on drums. Calo offered two eclectic, 90-minute sets of well-known and obscure pop, rock and blues covers as well as several excellent originals, with the first set completely sold out. His entertaining stories between songs often provided new insights.
Calo opened strong with “Ain’t Doing Too Bad,” a Don Robey song introduced by Bobby Bland in 1964, playing electric guitar for this funky blues number. On “Do I Love You Too Much,” he humorously “quoted” several songs in his guitar solo, including the theme from The Godfather, “Walk Don’t Run,” and “The Munsters” theme song, offering a pop quiz afterwards to see who got the quotes. Whenever he switched between his electric and acoustic guitars, he would announce a “costume change.”
“Wired to the Moon” is a Peter Calo original, one he wrote when he first arrived in New York, and had not performed in years. It’s “kind of jazzy”–a fast jazz waltz with a Beatlesque bridge.. He also flaunted an impressive ability to sing while playing a persistent, complex bass line. His original “Elephants Never Forget” was inspired by his daughter Molly, who loved elephants. The somewhat Lennonesque and circus-like song featured Gary Schreiner on harmonica.
A medley of “Full Moon Tango” and “Bring It On Home” was largely instrumental, with a Spanish guitar solo intro, featuring an accordion solo along with a lovely blending of accordion and guitar, Calo doubling
on a long guitar and vocal solo. His gorgeous rendition of “Moon River” in the second set was a big highlight, with a guitar solo played like a classical guitar, and a sweet chromatic harmonica solo. Before launching into “Another Star,” one of the few songs in both sets, Calo told the marvelous story of 15-year-old Gordon Bahary persistently calling Stevie Wonder and audaciously offering to produce the superstar’s next album—and that was Bahaery’s start in the music business! He further encouraged the audience to help him with the “la-las” at the end of the song.
Though Calo doesn’t consider himself a true jazz cat, this being Jazz on Main, he showed some great jazz skills on a terrific Freddie Hubbard instrumental as well as “Centerpiece Bb,” repeated from the first set—a classic jazz song by Harry “Sweets” Edison and Jon Hendricks. Finally, after a fun take on “Love Shack,” with more audience participation, Calo closed out the night with a sweet acoustic rendition of “Young at Heart.”
For more information, including his performance schedule, check Peter Calo out on www.petercalo.com. His album of originals, Time Machine, can be played on his website in the Music tab.
For information on Jazz on Main, go to www.jazzonmain.com
