A night of... R&B... Hip-Hop... Jazz

she approached the stage as the band played the music to...

i looked at my reflection in the water / thought what an unlikely pair / closed my eyes, held my breath, plummeted down,down,down / and anchored myself there

can't tell how long i've been / in the company of gills and tails / i think i feel my skin
growing scales

can i come up for air / can i come up, can come up

i'm gettin' eaten up down here / i'm just not built like them / the big fish have a monopoly
the little fish get buried in the sand

this here world i'm in / sucks your life out, leaves you comatose / take back your salt and fins
send me a lifeboat

i look up at longing at the surface / hypnotized by the way the sunlight seems to ride each ripple / and they do a dance / every ray becomes a beckoning hand / i miss the sweet taste of oxygen / i mistook this for the promised land

"Gills and Tails"... the song that mesmerizes me... and causes me to belt out the lyrics...

she sang the one song that i listen to daily, "Weather". she belted out "Tell Me" from her days with Groove Theory and melted my heart with "Make Me Whole". i wanted to get up and dance as she sang "Bravebird" and shake my hips to "Trouble". we went back to 1999 with "Get Up". she sang "Magic" directly to one of her fans who traveled to NYC all the way from Tampa, just to see her. she paid homage to the greats with "Pop Life" by Prince and "All I Do" by Stevie. she graced us with 2 new songs and passed the mic around to the people in the crowd, including her 10 year-old daughter who has a voice on her. her oldest daughter took to the keyboards and sang Radiohead's "Everything in its Right Place" and she sang back-up for her.

it was my first time seeing Amel Larrieux, the songstress, the poet, the woman behind the voice that has captivated me for years and i left B.B. King's Bar & Grill elated. the venue felt less like a club but rather like i was sitting on the edge of Amel's livingroom couch. she wasn't the perfect performer. she forgot the words to a song or two. the notes weren't perfect to every song and band wasn't the tightest knit. but there was perfection in all of that imperfection, it was the most perfect performance i've seen in the longest of time. Amel's voice is simply angelic and it's impossible for that to be heard through earphones. i was blessed by seeing and hearing her live.