The Devil's Time

My evening began with a lesson in self-appreciation.

On my way to dinner, I stopped at the drugstore where a woman gasped and pointed at my legs, "I loooove your tights, girl!" Thanking her, I said they were an inexpensive Target pair, a confidence that got her talking.

"I bought myself some cute ones like that and wore them to church with a sweater dress and not too hootchie-kootcie, either," she said, gesturing to a skirt length far longer than mine. "You should have seen the nasty looks I got in church. I told them don't hate on me because I got these nice legs"

She outweighed me by a hundred pounds minimum and she was as confident about her nice legs as I am about my old ones.

We were soul sisters, she and I.

On that high note, I went to Curry Craft for dinner, finding it satisfyingly busy with a lot of Indian people and a table of gabbing women, so I became the lone bar sitter.

My place in the universe is secure. While I am happy to be that person at the bar sitting alone, if I'd thought it through, I'd have brought some reading material.

One of the servers took pity on me, coming over after putting my order in to chat me up, asking what I do.

Poor thing, before my food arrived, he heard about my walking and music show going and took questions about how he fills his days (applying to graduate school and doing laundry).

I bet he was glad when my Juhu beach-style chaat, a medium-hot melange of puffed rice, potatoes, green chili, red onions, pomegranate and spices and naan arrived, saving him from further interrogation.

Karawali prawns made killer hot with roasted tomato, clove, chili and garlic masala was balanced by lemon/curry leaf vinaigrette drizzled on the plate for contrasting color and flavor.

Full as a tick after a lovely, albeit unusually quiet, meal, I left in the pouring rain to go to Balliceaux for music.

My first stop was the loo, where I found wall art saying, "Trouble, Come Home," with an arrow pointing toward the back room.

Underneath it, someone had scrawled, "Tried."

We can't always accomplish what we set out to do.

Ombak was just about to start and I wouldn't have wanted to miss any of their set. It's been close to three years since they played out and, having seen them three or four times before that, I knew what a treat they are.

The band is so full of A-list musicians that listening to them is like being privy to a master class.

All of them - bandleader Bryan Hooten, Brian Jones, JC Kuhl, Trey Pollard and Cam Ralston- are so amazingly good that it's fun just to watch them eyeball each other as they take off in unexpected musical directions.

Tonight I sat back to enjoy their intriguing sound full of odd time signatures, which takes its cues from just about everything: jazz, folk music, math rock and much of the musical landscape in between, with a couple of music lovers I knew.

On "Island," Brian Jones was so busy drumming on every possible part of his drum kit that I half expected him to reach over his shoulder and start playing on the wooden frame of the window above his head. Cam's sheet music kept getting knocked off the stand by the bows coming off his bass.

Introducing "Megatron," Bryan observed that it was obvious these were old songs by the cultural references; "Island" came from the TV show "Lost" and "Megatron" came from the Transformers series.

While the titles may have been a tad dated, the music was as fresh as a daisy.

Watching the musicians take such delight in each others' solos is a big part of the Ombak experience for the audience.

And tonight that small, jazz-loving crowd was as respectful as a listening room, an utterly rare occurrence at Balliceaux.

After intermission, they played an abbreviated but still stellar rendition of "Aware" off the "Framing the Void" album most of us in the room probably own.

Before launching into "Listen to the World," Cam looked at the music, shaking his head and saying, "Oh, man!" and causing Bryan to check with him to see if he still wanted to do it.

"Suuuure," the bassist said, evoking the anything goes philosophy of the night, also evident before they did Brian Jones' "R.H.," a nod to Pittsburgh drummer Roger Humphries.

"Let's vamp first," Brian instructed the band.

"It's cool, baby," leader Bryan agreed, head bobbing as the song exploded.

"Fresh out of the oven" he called the brand new song "Collapses," warning that it wasn't fully cooked before knocking everyone's socks off with a 5/4 beat that a musician near me identified as "devil's time."

Next time I'm having a difficult go of something, that's how I'll refer to it.

They finished with a Tuvan folk melody, with Bryan saying, "I don't know what it's about because I don't speak Tuvan."

It began with Cam bowing his bass for a change and Brian playing drums with no sticks and made all the better by guitarist Trey Pollard sliding notes into each other to mimic Tuvan throat singing.

God, these guys are good.

The best news is that Ombak is back and planning to play one night a month at Balliceaux for the foreseeable future.

If Ombak is trouble, they tried and have finally come home.

It's cool, baby. So cool.