Michael Glines’ one-year stay in Shinchon-Dong, Seoul in South Korea was more than a trip to learn his mother’s native language. It was an epiphanic quest into a musical realm that Glimes, who had been performing and writing music for several years prior to the excursion, had never experienced.
He spent his days jamming with a Korean-Brazilian flautist, who turned him on to many Brazilian styles of music. He also became close friends with a Korean jazz guitar prodigy, who passed along some invaluable fingerpicking tips.
By the time Glines returned to the States, he was a transformed musician – and also able to speak Korean.
“Jazz, classical, bossa nova and samba all went into developing [my new style],” Glines says. “Brazilian music has so many layers to it.”
The musician’s 2012 debut Let Yourself is a conglomeration of the influences Glines immersed himself in. An inviting bossa nova rhythm flows through the record’s reggae-steeped opener “Everything.” Glines, performing Friday at Blue Fin with his band Sugar Sauce, spits blue-eyed soul over it that sometimes kicks into semi-scat, John Butler-flavored overdrive.
With the R&B-tickled “Phone Number” – about the singer-songwriter’s anxiety as a networker and self-promoter of his music – Glines showcases fingerpicking fluency with a riff he plucks with rhythmic potency and a spacy interlude propelled by savory harmonics.
Bogie and the Turtles, also performing, structure songs written by guitarist/singer Keith Damron or electric pianist/singer Skip Pieper, whose styles have as much in common as do Gandhi and General Patton. Damron pens traditional garage rock while Pieper writes tunes that don’t always have a chorus, bridge or normal verse. From the sound of the band’s debut EP Besides – also featuring drummer and the band’s namesake Bogie Pieper and bassist Sean Browne – the unique diversity that each songwriter brings to the table shields BATT from drabness. It also makes it challenging to describe their sound in a few words.
“We’ve got the reverb-y guitars mixed with a piano and a drummer who sounds like he got tired of playing jazz and decided to play in a rock band,” Damron explains. “[On the record] we were going for an accurate representation of what we sound like live so we made sure it was loose and everything was done in one or two takes, mistakes and all. Perfection is boring.”
The album opener, “Creative,” is a ’90s alt rock, MTV Buzz Cut with shoegazer tendencies echoing Radiohead’s Pablo Honey. The record’s bookend, “Surf’s Up, Bro,” is reverb porn a la The Ventures coated in time signature changes.
Santa Cruz psych blues outfit The Redlight District rounds out the show with jams glazed in jazz, soul, roots, rock and Stephan Sams’ wide vocal range.
MICHAEL GLINES with SUGAR SAUCE, BOGIE AND THE TURTLES and THE REDLIGHT DISTRICT perform 9pm Friday, July 13, at the Blue Fin Cafe & Billiards, 685 Cannery Row, Monterey. $5. 717-4280.
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