Matt O’Ree furnishes all the fireworks you’ll need this Fourth, when the Shore’s bluesical legend lights the fuse on another Friday Jamian’s jam.
Not so very long ago the undisputed local capital of fireworks fun (and the occasional short fuse), the greater Red Bank green has opted to keep a lower profile during recent Fourths — but if you’re wandering the downtown streets this Friday night in search of some white-hot sizzle and spark, you just might find what you’re looking for at Jamian’s Food and Drink on Monmouth Street, where Matt O’Ree provides the pyrotechnics.
It’s another entry in an ongoing first-Friday gig at the musically minded Monmouth Street watering hole — one made all the more intense by the seasonal heat, the holiday-weekend vibe, and the fact that it doesn’t get much more all-American than O’Ree, his downright Ree-gal blues guitar technique, and the musically minded crowd at Jamian LaViola’s classically casual watering hole.
Equipped with his road-tested Gibson Les Paul (and his Ron Paul bumper sticker), Matt O’Ree and his band — including Hammond B3 flying ace Eric Safka — deal out several sets of super-competitive originals and savvy covers, from about 8 pm on. From there, that endlessly seductive road can beckon the band anywhere from the deep South to South America, but it’s a ribbon of asphalt that leads inexorably back to the crossroads of Monmouth and Maple, where O’Ree can be expected to take his place near the streetside window, first Friday in August.
