The Rev. B.D. Winfield of Cicada Omega performs Saturday night at Silver Moon. (Photo by Ben)
I didn’t get to see a lot of Portland trash-blues band Cicada Omega Saturday night, because I spent most of my evening seeing Weinland at McMenamins. (More on that later.) But I was at Silver Moon long enough to notice a few things:
-What was a quartet is now a trio, as bassist Daniyel Hicks was nowhere to be seen, and word around the club was that he is no longer in the band. Which is a little odd, considering three of Cicada Omega’s four members have known each other for more than a decade and, essentially, moved from Kentucky to Portland to make music together.
-Even without Hicks, the rest of the band makes one heck of a racket. These dudes are loud and fiery.
-The band’s frontman, The Rev. B.D. Winfield, is an expert yelper, screamer, howler, growler and all-around cantankerous kind of guy. The chatty Silver Moon crowd got under his skin: “Y’all shut up now, ’cause this s–t is gonna blow your mind,” he shouted at one point.
-Winfield resembles, both vocally and physically, Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock. Add in his belligerence and his banjo skills, and the two are like twin brothers from different sides of the country: Brock from the drab suburban Northwest, and Winfield from the swampy, slow-paced world of Western Kentucky.
-Using only two drummers and slide guitar or banjo, Cicada Omega puts a pretty punchy spin on Delta blues. Rhythm is the name of the game for this band; Winfield can play and sing, but really, it’s all just pieces of a puzzle meant to make you involuntarily shake your thang.
-Watching people dance — and the different ways people dance — is endlessly entertaining.
There are a couple more photos of Cicada Omega in the Frequency Flickr pool, which you can browse here.
Tags: Cicada Omega
