Seth Yacovone Band
Yessir!
(Independent)
First Appeared in The Music Box July 2000, Volume 7, #7
Written by John Metzger
It’s not often that a band attempts to emulate Blues Traveler. Most jam bands seem perfectly content to follow in the funkier footsteps of Phish. Yet, Blues Traveler is exactly the group from which the Seth Yacovone Band seems to draw — albeit with a heavier dose of the blues. While this doesn’t work completely, it’s still a refreshing change of pace.
Yessir!, Yacovone’s second album, captures his group performing at Vermont’s Club Metronome in 1998. As such, it crackles with energy and is full of long, exploratory jams. The biggest problem lies in often infantile lyrics that so often seem to plague the jam band scene. Let’s face it — it’s hard to take seriously a song called Chunky Baby Crap Brown Haggis on Toast or a chorus like "Hick jam, hick jam, hick jam/U.S.A./Hick jam, hick jam/Tomorrow and today." Then again, Yacovone was only in his late teens when the album was recorded, and while not everything is quite this bad, his lyrics and song titles will hopefully improve with time.
Fortunately, Yessir! isn’t really about the lyrics. It’s about the music, and here is
where the Seth Yacovone Band truly delivers. Yacovone’s style fluidly shifts between those of Mike Bloomfield and Duane Allman. Further driving the music are the snaking Bobby Sheehan-like bass lines
of Tommy Coggio and the John Mayall- and Charlie Musselwhite-inspired harmonica grooves of Luke
Boggess. Combined, the group tears into their jazz and blues-fueled repertoire with unyielding
passion and invigorating conviction, often working snippets of other songs into their solo
excursions. In their short existence, the band has turned quite a few heads in New England, and as
they mature and expand their presence, they’ll surely make a name for themselves from coast to
coast. 
½
Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2000 The Music Box