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Graham Clark
Music Features Writer
@Maxximum23Clark
9:32 AM 27th April 2015
arts

Incognito - Hoochie Coochie Club - Newcastle

 
London has the Jazz Café and Ronnie Scott's, Milan has the Blue Note Club and surprisingly Newcastle has the superb Hoochie Coochie club which is definitely worth a trip up the A1.

The venue may be small but that works in its favour: there are not many places you can see artists playing in such an intimate venue like this: Chaka Khan, Jocelyn Brown, Gregory Porter, Kenny Thomas and Joey Negro are some of the acts who have recently played the 220 capacity venue.

Making a rare UK appearance, British based soul/jazz act Incognito made a welcome return to the north east club. The main anchor of the band is of course Jean-Paul Maunick who has assembled a group of accomplished musicians around him.

"We are celebrating 36 years of the band" he informed the discerning audience. "You should be proud of this club and you all keeping the music alive" he continued.

With such a big back catalogue of tracks to perform the band concentrated on what was essentially, a greatest hits set, although they did perform some tracks off their last album, Amplified. Something about July showed that the soul is there in the group.

The three vocalists in the group - Vanessa Haynes, Tony Momelle and Katie Leone made the songs come alive with their deep and soulful voices. It was a night of mutual appreciation between audience and band and one which you never wanted to end.

A percussion interlude mid-set had Jean-Paul looking proudly at his young musicians as he stood at the side of the stage. The 12 piece band reformed back on stage to perform Nights over Egypt, Everyday and Always There, with Vanessa Haynes replicating the vocals superbly of Jocelyn Brown who originally sang on the track.

It wasn't all over yet as the band encored with their version of Chaka Khan's We Got Each Other. Bob Marley's One Love played over the PA system as the musicians left the stage.

The music that is in the charts may be commercial and have a short shelf life but tonight was all about music with longevity and that is timeless. Superb