THE Budos Band Delivers, Pops Steals Show At Tulips
“Happy Birthday, dear Pops. Happy Birthday to you.” That was the chorus of 300+ Friday night at Tulips – a love filled message to Sha La Das frontman, Bill “Pops” Schalda on his 80th birthday.
– WORDS BY CP • PHOTOS BY JUSTIN IKPO
Tulips was filled with friendly folks and music lovers. The cool crowd included pretty much his entire family, his grandchildren, close friends and a whole lot of strangers who, by that point, felt like part of the celebration too.
We’ll come back to Pops and The Sha La Das in a minute…
The absolutely scorching Budos Band was the evening’s headliner. And boy did they deliver. Often a band is clearly driven by one outsized talent. Maybe there’s a virtuoso guitarist or a brilliant vocalist, and everyone else is just very good. Not so here. This is a band full of elite level musicians who played with a steadiness and confidence that makes the whole greater than the very impressive sum of the parts. The music is somewhat psychedelic, 70s late 60s reminiscent with fantastic funk and disco bones and beats.
The arrangements shifted and expanded throughout the set, propelled by an absurdly funky and confident keyboardist and the perfect percussion package, including of course, bongos. And who doesn’t love a band with multiple bomb ass brass players -It was tight, powerful and full of energy.
The Budos Band has occupied several spots in my record collection for years, though somehow this was my first time seeing them live. They sounded incredible, played everything I had hoped to hear and left it all on the stage. The entire performance was full of life and passion, and nearly everyone in the room was bouncing. Before moving along I want to make this very clear, The Budos Band gets stellar marks from me, they were fantastic. I’ll do my best to see them every chance I get.
The Budos Band and Sha La Das are connected through the wonderful Daptone Records, a label whose remarkable roster has included Sharon Jones, Charles Bradley, Antibalas, Lee Fields and the Menahan Street Band among others. The Sha La Das’ story took shape in a Brooklyn studio, where Bill and his sons Will, Paul and Carmine gathered to sing background vocals during the recording of Charles Bradley’s Victim of Love. Musician and producer Thomas Brenneck (Budos Band) heard the four Schaldas singing in close harmony. There’s sometimes an otherwise unavailable magic when voices from the same family sing together. This was one of those times Brenneck recognized, and decided it needed to be recorded. This lead to the Sha La Das first record in 2018.
That brings us back to Friday night. The Sha La Das are Bill “Pops” Schalda and his three sons, Carmine, Paul and Will. It would be very wrong to paint them as underdogs who just happened to be opening for a great headliner. Pops has a lifetime of musical accomplishments behind him, and the group has built an enormous audience of its own. More importantly, they can flat out perform.
And maybe most importantly of all, Pops can sing. Straight up and with zero qualifiers. He isn’t good “for 80.” He’s GOOD, period. His voice is rich, powerful and expressive. What stood out for me, was the stellar falsetto he effortlessly and sometimes unexpectedly manipulated. The music that evening felt like the perfect showcase for his considerable talents.
Recent JAMBALOO Music Prize finalist Paul Schalda frequently served as spokesperson for his brothers/the band during the performance. The love they share for their dad and family was obvious throughout the entire night. So was their sincere love of music. But this again takes us back to Pops who taught his boys to act as his backup singers growing up in New York.
The room was exactly the right amount of full for me and though it was a little warm that actually fit just right also. Noticeably, and wonderfully absent were the usual people talking during the performances and the onslaught of selfie takers documenting themselves instead of watching the stage. People were there to listen. The vibes truly were immaculate.
All of Bill’s sons had come to perform with him. His grandchildren were there. Friends filled the room. The members of the Budos Band are friends with Pops too, and they repeatedly made it clear that this wasn’t just another stop on a tour. As Brenneck said more than once on stage, “Tonight is about Pops.”
The reason I drove to Fort Worth was the Budos Band, and I would happily make the drive again just to see them. They were phenomenal. But the reason this night will stick with me is The Sha La Das, and more specifically Bill Schalda. Eighty years old, surrounded by generations of his family, kicking ass with his sons, making magic in a room full of love and respect.
Sometimes you get lucky and stumble into something more than the show you thought you were attending. Friday night became a celebration of family, music and a life spent bringing the two together. What a treat.
