JD McPherson played TURF July 5 at Fort York Garrison Commons in Toronto. Photo: Tom Beedham

Supplying Toronto Urban Roots Fest with nostalgia-satisfying rock music that turns down the guitar while letting saxophone, upright bass, piano, and percussion take the spotlight, JD McPherson’s band was a reminder of a time when people could call a band rock and say it without summoning images of guitar heads churning out what seems to have become an obligatory kind of masturbatory guitar noodling.

McPherson’s is a band that approaches the music of the past with contemporary wisdom, arriving at rockabilly rhythm and blues that sounds like history but nothing its forebears could have done. Count free jazz cymbal crashes, and funky bass lines in the mix.

Originally published by The Ontarion.