David Bromberg Quintet Tickets

I am a long time David Bromberg fan, having first seen him in Boston in the 1970's. A constant in these shows has always been the diversity of music in the performances. Typically, from song to song it could start with a brassy R&B number, move into stellar guitar blues, a beautiful acoustic guitar number, and maybe a few fiddle tunes thrown in for good measure. While I never loved all of the mutations, the shows as a whole kept me coming. As Mr. Bromberg resumed his career after a years long hiatus in which he built violins and chased other interests, the shows were a little tamer but retained the wild and varied flavor of his younger days. Until Saturday night (December 17th) at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, that is. In a show titled "50 Years of David Bromberg" by the Basie, it sounded like one speed, one song, and very few of the staples from over these 50 years. I hope that David and band at least enjoyed themselves, because for many of us it was a snooze. Shame.

Bromberg is great! I've been enjoying him for the past 50 years

First time seeing Dave Bromberg band and first time at the Neptune Theater. The theater was much more intimate than I had expected and the staff was welcoming and very helpful. Although I was sitting just a couple of rows from the stage the sound mix was very good. I usually walk around a little bit during a concert to hear how to mixes around the house and the Neptune Theater has a really good sound system and the sound engineer you how to work the room. Although I've heard a couple of songs on Sirius XM radio I really hadn't come across Dave Bromberg over the past several decades. This wasn't a scorching blues concert... Which is fine. The quality of the sextet's setlist selection and each of the band members prowess on their instruments was captivating. The word Americana is getting thrown around a lot now when it comes to describing a band's music. In this case I think it fits. It was almost like sitting around on an evening and listening to friends play really good music. Sometimes you go to a show and a band plays at you but the Dave Bromberg quintet and band... There are six people... Really interacted with the crowd very well. Dave's stories of the songs they sang we're very much like a storyteller sharing their thoughts. Oddly enough the encore wasn't really a rabble rousing get down to leave you all pumped up as you left. The whole Band came out and stood at the stages front, in front of the stage monitors and in front of the microphones. You could hear their voices and their acoustic instruments radiate out from the stage over us. Okay there was an electric upright bass but without that there was no way to hear a bass. I didn't really read about shows before this one and I haven't read about it in any of their shows since this one so I don't know if they do this all the time. But the encore made me think of how it probably was at The Big Pink watching The Band rehearse. So personal and so intimate.

I have been a fan of David's music for decades. Most of the songs he played that night were unrecognizable. David played what he wanted to play, not what he KNEW the audience wanted to hear. Since the audience paid money to attend the concert, it would have been far more fair if he had mixed in some of his known standards. It wasn't fair to his fans.

The band and the music was wonderful. The Neptune staff was great and I truly enjoyed every minute. My only regret was that I cant remember the name of the last song that was sung by the entire band, I should have written it down. Thank you everyone involved in the show. t.b.

Very good, just be sure that you bring along your COVID vaccines along with you lol