A 'Beautiful' Thursday night

Christina Custode moved the earth Thursday and left hearts trembling in Buffalo packing PAUSA Art House with two hours of Carole King as well as several original tunes accompanied by Monkis on drums and the bass and harmonizing vocals of Ed Croft.

“When I was 16 and playing in bars around Buffalo, people used to come up to me and say ‘you remind me of a young Carole King,’ ” Custode said with a chuckle. “Now they just come up to me and say ‘you remind me of Carole King.’ ”

King, a legendary songwriter before she became a performer, has a shy, almost fragile tone, slightly nasal and insecure. Custode, by contrast, has a clearer, prettier, more confident tone.

King’s first husband, and writing partner, was Gerry Goffin. When they wrote “Will you still love me tomorrow?” for the Shirelles, it gave them a hit that enabled them to get a home.

From that song, Custode moved on to “The Greatest Thing that Never Happened,” a tune about love unrealized.

“Someone once told me this sounds like a Taylor Swift song,” she said. “If someone knows her or her management we are for hire and willing to sell.”

Custode talked about the relationship between King and James Taylor. At first, Carole thought Taylor didn’t like her. In time, she realized it wasn’t dislike but intimidation because he recognized her greatness. When Taylor wrote “Fire and Rain” King heard “I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend” and lifted the lyric as the foundation of “You’ve got a friend.”

“Friend” was followed by an original composition, “Walls” inspired by doomscrolling and heading down the internet rabbit hole because when the world is not right they find a spot to keep them out of sight. “We found a place to sit because it’s easier to stand against a wall.”

The percussion/bass intro to “Too late” (which bumped Taylor’s version of “You’ve got a friend” into second place on the charts) was killer. You know when a musician like Monkis sits behind a limited drum kit and makes that much complex rhythm something special is going on.

Brian “Monkis” Chmaj and Custode teach in the Niagara Falls High School Music Department. “Monk is” adopted the moniker as a way of staying centered and focused on acting and remaining present when sometimes focus and concentration can drift.

His bass compadre, Croft, lives in Springville, teaches at SUNY Fredonia and Niagara University (formerly NCCC) and play music when he is not driving. He said he plays 30 to 40 shows a year at PAUSA.

There is something special about being in a packed house watching talented musicians and hearing Custode on a Yamaha baby grand piano with nearly perfect sound, every patron in their seat, listening intently with phones stowed even though no one told them to turn off the ringer or pay attention.

About 10 years ago, perhaps a little more, Custode’s father Lew played regularly at the Topper with Custode and Parisi at Ferry Avenue and 19th Street in Niagara Falls. In a word, that corner was rough, still is. All manner of hell happens on that street corner. Christina accepted a residency there for 8 weeks in the struggling jazz club run by Carl DeFranco.

It was an oasis inside, but in time, she was accepted as part of the fabric that brings hope to hopeless places, greeted with hugs by little girls who lived upstairs with their mother and accepted by the sometimes rough crowd in the bar, “a pocket of goodness in the middle of chaos.”

A bedraggled regular in the bar brought her a book he’d written and inspired a song about the loneliest father.

“Little girl, won’t you read my book” Custode wrote. “Take your time. Take a long hard look. In these pages you will find my daughter.”

Lew said the author claimed to have come from Alaska. The daughter in the book was the artist known as Jewel. That bedraggled regular is not forgotten but no one really knows if he was Jewel’s father or not.

Bars like that, and the characters within always have stories that sometimes add up and sometimes give the pregnant pause of “wait a minute. He’s not old enough to have done all those things.”

The Topper is open again, sort of, renovated by Eyal Cohen and within the last year host to burlesque shows catering to people who prefer bottle service and come to watch Black female performers shaking surgically enhanced booties as large guards with licensed firearms stand by to keep everyone safe.

Christina, in the iteration that did that residency at the Topper, and today, is far more wholesome.

Of course, no one came this far only to come this far, singing lonely songs on a dark night in a bar with a sticky floor and no one listening.

Instead, writers write, singers sing, drummers drum and bass players sing gentle harmony to appreciative crowds at places like PAUSA, even if they pay their bills as educators or financial planners, or regional vice presidents for financial services firms, grateful to have a vocation that permits an avocation that leads them through loney times they thought would never end.

The music is their friend. On Thursday night, Christina Custode showed PAUSA she got up in the morning with a smile on her face and showed the world beauty.

“If people didn’t listen to Carole King we wouldn’t have Carole King,” Custode said. “Thank you for supporting live, original music and please know, if you buy a CD from an artist, that’s the easiest way. A Spotify play makes the artist ⅓ of a penny.”

When you buy a CD, the artist profits.

You can learn more about Custode, her music and when she is performing next, here. https://christinacustode.com/ Lew, (Custode and Parisi, is worth a listen as well.)

Lazara Martinez supports musicians, and the community at PAUSA. There are many other talented musicians worth listening. You can hear who is next by clicking here, supporting small business and real artists. https://www.pausaarthouse.com/

Friends don’t let friends listen to Spotify, eat at the Hardrock Cafe or drink Tim Hortons.

Friends buy real music directly from the artist, send Niagara Falls visitors to Red Coach Inn and get their coffee at Power City or Misty Guild.