Monday, April 9, 2012

JC Brooks is trying to break your heart

Wrote this a while ago for the Fall print edition of Blurt, but it's online today if you didn't catch the magazine.

SOUL, MAN! JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound

Currently on tour in the U.S. and fresh off a riotous reception in Austin at Blurt's SXSW party, the Chicago funk-soul freight train is STILL trying to break your heart.

JENNIFER KELLY

"Shi-it," talk-sings JC Brooks, putting his whole body into the phrase and drawing it out into multiple, Southern soul syllables to the delight of his audience. He is a sharp-dressed man in an oversize white suit and Keds as he flirts with the audience, his band behind him in a locked-in, Stax-style groove. They're a stolid bunch, but that's okay because Brooks is all the show they need. Soon he's chicken-walking, jump-pirouetting James Brown style, and fanning one hand like a Southern Baptist grandmother caught up in one heck of a funky transport.

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