“We’re The Irrationals and we’re here to protest.”
With those words Professor of Economics Gil Skillman opened a nearly three-hour set in WestCo Café on Thursday night. The show, sponsored by the Students Event Collective (SEC), brought a mix of rock, bluegrass and soul to a venue better known for punk rock than for T-Bone Walker covers. Under the tag “Alt. Rock and Coldplay make Jack a dull boy,” The Irrationals invited students who may not have been familiar with blues music to check out the (almost) all Wesleyan faculty and staff ban—hey borrowed a bassist from Yale.
Aside from Skillman and drummer Brandi Hood, a construction worker at Wesleyan, the rest of the band is comprised of ITS workers. Guitarist John Meertz and vocalist Joanne Agostinelli both work for Wesleyan’s ITS department. Bassist Joseph Paolillo is the director of data networks for Yale University. The prevalence of ITS workers did not go unnoticed by the band.
“We used to be called ITS A Band,” Meertz said.
But that was five years ago, before Skillman joined. He has since lent his virtuoso guitar playing and blues-influenced style to the newly dubbed The Irrationals, making the band more than just a novelty act of staff members.
“I’ve been playing steadily for 37 years, and music runs very deep in my family,” he said. “Like every other blues musician, I steal from everybody.”
Among a bevy of blues legends that he listed as influences (B.B. King, Buddy Guy and John Lee Hooker are only the tip of the ice berg), he also finds inspiration in many contemporary artists.
“Los Lobos is far and away my favorite band,” he said. “And I’ll mention that I was pleasantly surprised by Green Day’s latest album.”
The night started slowly. For their first song, a cover of Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why,” Skillman played backup guitar to Agostinelli’s soulful singing (imagine a computer savvy Janis Joplin). The confines of this ballad, however, did not leave room for the originality and clever improvisation that characterizes the band.
As the night progressed, several students filed in, presumably from WestCo’s Wine and Cheese upstairs. The crowd, which totaled only fifteen or twenty for the first hour, tripled in size over the next ninety minutes. The classic rock concert transformed into a dance party, and the band responded by playing with more enthusiasm as they tried to keep the students on their feet.
“We love playing for students,” Skillman said between sets. “And the SEC is great.”
Feeding off the students, the band supplied much excitement and energy to both sets. Skillman’s own composition, “Clarity,” was a hit. It turned out to be the only original song performed that night, but the crowd did not mind hearing covers. The Irrationals played songs ranging from Donna the Buffalo’s “40 Days and 40 Nights” to the White Stripes’ “Fell in Love With a Girl.” But the two high points were “Evil Ways” and “Black Magic Woman,” both Santana songs. During “Evil Ways” Skillman quipped that the song expressed the sentiments of a professor berating a poor student.
“You’ve got to change,” he yelled at an imaginary economics major. “You’ve got to change your evil ways.”
The performance, which had to end before the band could finish all the songs on its set list, closed with “Black Magic Woman.” Once again Skillman stood out as he improvised lengthy guitar solos that perfectly replicated the difficult fretwork for which Carlos Santana is known. After the song the crowd left the café still dancing.
Skillman was by no means the only attraction. The other band members admirably held their own. Meertz adeptly switched between lead, rhythm and acoustic guitar, and he was at his best playing blues harmonica on several numbers. Agostinelli’s rich voice was at times reminiscent of Joan Baez. This was most apparent on an upbeat cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Gimme One Reason.” Hood, described as a “hard rocker” by Skillman, sang backup and lead from behind her drum set, and her drumming was spot on throughout the evening.
The age disparity between the performers and the audience did not get in the way of either having a good time. There were only a few instances in which the generation gap was noted. The first was when Skillman broke into a game he called “Name That Cheesy Guitar Riff.” He played lines from several old songs, including the “Batman Theme Song,” “Secret Agent Man,” and “Wipeout.” Most of the young audience was stumped, and he jokingly admonished them for not knowing an integral part of their history.
The age difference also became apparent during Skillman’s introduction of Wilson Pickett’s “In The Midnight Hour.”
“This one was written in … shit, you weren’t even born yet,” he said.
The joke caused a ripple of laughter throughout the room and solidified the bond between the band and the audience. Skillman often yelled into the crowd and cracked jokes with students.
This concert was a successful endeavor of the Students Event Collective, the recently formed student organization seeking to bring new entertainment to the Wesleyan campus.
“Our goal is to provide a consistent and professional platform for artists and musicians within the Wesleyan community to perform on,” said Kingston Wong ’06, president of the SEC.
Future SEC events include the LOVE Buffet on Feb.19 and the salsa band Orquesta Fiebre on Feb. 25. The Irrationals will be playing Feb. 17 at La Boca Mexican Restaurant on Main Street, and they will be trying to schedule another campus show for April.
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