An Amazing Night of Memphis Music at The Buccaneer with John Paul Keith and Dave Cousar @JohnPaulKeith

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All the years I have lived in Memphis, I had never been to the Buccaneer Lounge in Midtown, but I saw on a live music schedule in the Memphis Flyer that my homeboy Daniel McKee was playing a gig there, so I decided to go. According to the schedule, the show was supposed to start at 10 PM, but when I pulled up, the place actually looked closed. One guy was standing on the porch, and only a couple of cars were outside. But I ventured on in and paid the cover charge, even though the place seemed fairly deserted. My friend Daniel was the first to arrive, and over the next half hour musicians started to arrive, Pat Fusco with his B-3 organ, a drummer who had only recently moved to Memphis from New York and whose name I didn’t catch, indie Memphis rocker John Paul Keith and blues guitarist/singer Dave Cousar. When things got underway about 11 PM, it proved to be one of those amazing, serendipitous nights of music that can happen in Memphis. The song choices ran the gamut from soul to rock to blues to country, with a decided New Orleans bent at times. Dave Cousar and John Paul Keith took turns fronting different songs, and saxophone player Art Edmiston wandered in during the first set. When it seemed like it couldn’t get any better, shortly after John Paul’s soulful reading of “Bring It On Home To Me”, Marcella Simien dropped by to join him in a duet of Lee Dorsey’s “Waiting For My Ya-Ya”, and Paul Taylor came through to sit in as well. The Buccaneer is not a large club, and by the end of the night, it was standing room only, as John Paul Keith closed things out with a very appropriate song, “That’s How I Got To Memphis.” The cold winds howled outside, but it was a warm and cozy night of Memphis music inside.