“He pitches as though he’s double parked.”
-Pitcher Bob Gibson as described by announcer Vin Scully

***

Singer and guitarist Black Joe Lewis opens the show with the briefest of introductions: 

“We’ve been playing like this for a while. Hope you like it. We’re not going to stop for a while.” 

Moments later, he is torching the joint, soaring through an extended instrumental break, not fast or flashy, but somehow making it feel as if he’s propelled us to the middle of the set, skipping the warm up songs that bands and audiences use to acclimate, suss each other out. Lewis and his band, the Honeybears, get to the flow so quickly I lose track of conventional markers such as time and lyrics and song structures. Are they purposefully steering away from those elements in order to generate a different kind of energy? Or are they simply ready to roll, like Bob Gibson?