Live: The Notorious Cool Arrows
Tim Maloney and his band welcomed some special guests to the stage at Legends
I was about 48 hours deep in work projects and desperately needing to get away from my desk when Tim Maloney sent me a message to come check out his band, The Notorious Cool Arrows, playing a low-key Wednesday night gig at Legends.
Live music? You don’t have to ask me twice.
I was familiar with Tim Maloney as the bassist for James Cook band, but it was my first experience getting to see the Arrows. Maloney told me during a break that they just went through a lineup change and this was guitarist Tom Kat Hargrove’s first gig with the band on lead guitar.
Guitarist Harvey Toalson was ever-present on the mic as a co-lead vocalist with Maloney, and Toalson is an excellent harmony vocalist, too. Song selections consisted of everything from blues classics to rearranged pop hits to Tom Petty.
Toalson also serves as the spoiler for an ongoing Maloney gag, in which he tells (sometimes bad) one-liners between songs. “I was gonna be a history teacher but there’s no future in it.”
Toalson frequently objects as Maloney begins to tell a joke, in an attempt to stop the groaners. Maloney would say “I went into the store,” and Toalson promptly responded “No, you didn’t,” and then they were off and running on another song. Fun times.
Barry Sloane is the drummer for the Notorious Cool Arrows, talented and creative. There was one point in the show, just for fun, Sloane changed it up from a kind of boogie-woogie beat to a shuffle beat right in the middle of the song, and almost everybody in the band caught on right away. It was cool and attention-getting, and I was like “Well, I’ve never heard anybody do that before.”
Tim and the guys also welcomed a couple of special guests to the stage, including one I’d seen before in a quite different context — bassist and singer Kenny Reynolds.
I previously saw Kenny playing bass for HermAnthony at the Open Mic Night at the Iron Horse recently, and in that role, Kenny was quite happy to stand back and hold down the bottom end.
On this night, Kenny got to step up to the mic and let it go. If you wanna hear somebody belt 12-bar blues while playing the bass like a machine, Kenny is your guy.
Ronnie Hendricks was also a quite impressive sit-in during this gig, and he and Kenny Reynolds graced the stage for quite a few numbers. It was an entertaining night of boogie woogie, rock, and blues music, and for dancing and socializing with friends, you can’t really go wrong with The Notorious Cool Arrows.
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