Hooker
Story and Photos: Michael G. Rabinowitz

There is something sublime about deteriorated institutions of wealth that undergo an artistic reclamation.  The Bank, on Central Avenue, blends mixed-media art and music within black walls and a barren vault whose prior life of consumerism has been repossessed, like vines reclaiming an aqueduct.  The venue has become a perfect breeding ground for young, hungry local acts looking to perfect their sound, build a fan base, or just grow a set of balls while performing on stage.

At The Bank on April 22nd, opening for Lounge Cats and the Beauvilles, Micheal Hooker achieved all three of those goals when she and her band (fittingly named Hooker) took the stage.  With Jeff Shuniak on electric guitar and Nyree Young on acoustic, Hooker’s ability to flip genres (blues, alt-country, folk) was as effortless as changing wardrobes.  Hooker’s underlying mood was best expressed by the Robert Johnson cover, "Love in Vain."  Micheal’s voice sauntered in like molasses, somewhere in between the raspy and the ethereal, her vocal style ranging from Nina Simone to Hope Sandoval to Imogen Heap.

In “He's Drunk Again,” Hooker laments that her boyfriend can be found in the "same place as before," facedown on the bar.  In “The Crush,“ Micheal yearns for whiskey of her own.  “Stoic” and “The Hub” (a perfect portrait of the infamous downtown Tampa bar) turn the mirror on our own protective desire for façades, be it out in public or inside a bottle.  This common thread of romantic purgatory runs through Hooker’s music, where she’s waiting in limbo for her partner to arrive, depart, or just plain sober up.

The songwriting is what sets the band apart from other local acts, and the group’s lyrical process is democratic.  Shuniak refers to the procedure as “a triangle that flips,” each member leading the way at some point.  Poets like Baudelaire or the writings of M. Scott Peck and William Burroughs heavily influence the band.  But in unison, all three band members agree it is Nietzsche from which the well springs forth.

It is fitting, then, that their pending album will be called “Nihilist Davis,” a rather paradoxical pairing considering that it refers to Miles Davis.  Whereas both icons advocated deconstructionism, it’s instead through Hooker’s heartache where a catharsis is realized.  Rather than strip these pains away by reducing them to nothing, Hooker wallows in them.  Quite the contrary to nihilism.

So, can you sing the blues without hope or when you believe in nothing?  Nietzsche is famous for pronouncing “God is dead”, observing the demise of mysticism and faith in our modern world.  But faith can be renewed by our own eyes and ears by something such as Hooker’s talent, and I have faith such talent will rise above the local scene.

*Listen to Hooker at www.myspace.com/ihearthooker and live at Cafe Bohemia, every third Saturday of the month, at 937 Central Ave, St. Petersburg.