The blue beat-up Subaru swings a hard left onto NE 2 Ave. Little Haiti’s main vein throbs to the beat of overcrowded Jitneys and King Creole during the day, but the night is dark and quiet until I approach the dilapidated double-decker bus parked out front of Churchill’s Pub.

A mass of unwashed bodies blocks the entrance to the lot where I pay Cisco the baser $2 to ‘watch’ my car. The gravel reeks of booze and piss. Girls cackle as boys jockey for attention. Everyone is performing tonight, but the headliner, Sol Ruiz, is by the main door perched high in a female’s lap. She greets folks as they walk in with a “Heeeey maaaaaan” and everyone smiles. Her character is as infectious as her music. In some marvelously inexplicable way, she connects the mixed bag of hippies and harlots and all types of drunks; elements that would probably clash if not for that disarming greeting they receive as they first enter the bar.

Sol and her suitor, a goateed French keyboardist, play in a style of their own, meandering somewhere between son, folk, and eclectic psychedelic strangeness. She wails songs of love and love lost and all the partying that led up to it. It sounds like Janis Joplin raised on rice and beans.

“I’m a pirate,” she tells me, “a free spirit” as her fingers tatted with FREE LOVE strum her guitar.

Sol’s sounds reverberate with this philosophy of no boundaries or limits to experimentation and experience. Her latest release, Outlander, is firmly rooted in the lyricism of American folk music, yet the syncopation and downbeat pulse with the spirit of a guarachera.

In a town saturated with cultures from lower latitudes, American folk music is as foreign as you can get. There are few people in Miami who have roots that go two or three generations deep in this country. Yet Sol–a first generation American–has a voice that shines with a classic riverboat-outlaw-cowboy luster.

And they dig it. There’s no bass, no auto-tune, no PULL UP—just keys, strings and good vibes. During the 20 minutes she plays, she calls a spirit out of people. Folks sing along and jump on stage. The crowd gets denser and three 280lb guys in hoodies lock arms and do-si-do each other full steam, gold-tooth encrusted smiles twinkling as they twirl.

Now that’s a “good” show.

By Adam Ganuza

This entry was posted on August 24, 2010 at 1:39 pm and is filed under - I N S P I R E D - B Y - M U S I C -. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.