Thursday Night Service at The Church of James Blake

 “D’angelo!” a member of the audience murmured loudly between songs at James Blake’s April 18^th, Thursday night concert at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz, California.  Who knows exactly what the person meant but a few moments later as Blake fiddled with his keyboard and microphone they said it again, shouting this time, “D’Angelo!”  At the second and louder mention of the late 90’s R&B impresario, James Blake took notice and calmly and wittingly retorted in his endearing British accent, “What, is he here?...I hope he’s here that’d  be great?” Though he was joking there was a purposefully detectable amount of sincerity in Blake’s voice, and the audience responded with  both cheers and laughter.  No, D’angelo wasn’t there, nor did James Blake suddenly break into a set from the D’angelo songbook, but the brief exchange was indicative of Blake’s performance before the intimate crowd in the seaside college town and surfing haven an hour south of San Francisco.  Blake and many of his fans know and appreciate very well the lineage that he and his music fall into (yell D’angelo at an Aerosmith concert and see if you get a reply), which only increased the connection between the sentiment and sound of his songs and the audience that night.  Furthermore, anyone who’s spent some Sundays in a Black church knows where Blake takes some of his musical cues and that the roots of his sounds can be heard from a pew any Sunday morning in Black America.  But Blake’s concert wasn’t a holy event, it was a secular celebration of audible art—in a hallowed way.   At approximately 9pm Blake had kicked off the evening with the mellow intro to his single “I never Learnt to Share”; service at the church of James Blake had begun.  An hour and a half later when the doors of the church were opened and the mostly young crowed filed back onto Soquel Ave., Blake had assured his fans that his is a career worth following.