Photo by Stuart Levine

Southern Soul Assembly

Regent Theater

Los Angeles, CA

November 18

Had the four musicians that comprise the Southern Soul Assembly grown up together, they likely would have enjoyed many an opportunity to strum guitars, sing songs, and swap stories, perhaps even skip school, though probably not skip church.As it is, the joint partnership of Marc Broussard, Luther Dickinson, JJ Grey, and Anders Osborne gathered before its standing-room only congregation at the Regent Theater in downtown Los Angeles, each bringing his own colorful catalog of tunes and tales from a different pin on the map below the Mason-Dixon.In a two-hour appearance that resounded with themes of family and faith, friendship and fun, the Assembly shared more than music with its flock.

Seated onstage in a curving row, each with amplified acoustic guitars, and for Dickinson and Osborne a few electric dalliances, the evening’s ease of familiarity was apparent from the drop.“Play something,” a smiling Broussard requested of Osborne, the Swedish ex-pat from New Orleans more than happy to add some six-string dressing to his Bayou bandmate’s gospel-tinted voice.Indicative of the tacit format that worked marvelously throughout, each member of the quartet took a turn in the revolving spotlight, then passed the baton, leaving open to the other three whether to add a harmony vocal here or a guitar bit there in accompaniment.

Relaxed, comfortable, and most certainly Southern, the quartet regaled with prefacing stories that at times equaled the performances.Grey recalling a strip mall house of worship across from the north Florida lumberyard at which he toiled, Osborne’s portrait of ice-chewing days in the sweltering Crescent City, Broussard’s elegiac tribute to his grandmother’s life in the eye of Hurricane Isaac, or Dickinson’s touching casket goodbye of his own, all held universal sentiments, yet remained rooted with regional accent and accents.In offerings that linked Dickinson’s back-porch storyteller and Grey’s booming blues, including an animated detour into Muddy Waters’ “Mannnish Boy,” to Broussard’s dulcet uplift and Osborne’s grit and grace, the ensemble’s respect and reverence for one another stimulated genuinely organic collaboration and avoided a cloying mutual appreciation society, with contributions coming when it made sense and each having the sense to know when the artist alone was enough.Or, when four wasn’t enough, as Dickinson, whose own spectacular string-play dazzled again and again, invited friend Duane Betts to sit-in for some appetizing fretboard flourishes.

When a joking Broussard announced the break-up of the band, only to seconds later declare its future- one of continued touring and a possible album- his momentary subterfuge belied the obvious enjoyment of the collective for its members and its fans.The Southern Soul Assembly is just a breather from the successful solo pursuits they maintain individually, yet this concert demonstrates persuasively a richly entertaining option of its own, and one that Grey lightheartedly suggested they should continue into their 80s.No doubt they’d have plenty more stories to share.