Just when it seemed like a weekend filled with a garden of beer and deep-fried Oreos couldn't get any better, outdoor live music is thrown into the mix on each day of Spring Fair.
This year, the Baltimore-based Kelly Bell Band will be one of the acts bringing their smooth grooves to the stairs of Shriver.
For those who haven't caught a Kelly Bell Band show during their visits to local venues or their annual performance at Phi Psi's beach party, bassist and contributing vocalist Freddie Louden describes their sound as blues with a twist.
"We call it phat blues, but it's really a hybrid of traditional blues, funk and hip hop. No matter what, it always comes back to the blues," he said.
The Kelly Bell Band, which cites influences ranging from blues greats Bobby "Blue" Bland and Ray Charles, `70s old school funk groups and even early rap artists, is comprised of vocalist Kelly Bell, percussionist Spencer Brown, bassist Freddie Louden, guitarist Ira Mayfield, Jr., keyboardist Kirk Myers, and Dominic Selvi, who plays the horns.
The Kelly Bell Band has been a staple in the region's music scene for almost a decade, during which time the lineup has changed -- Bell himself is the only founding member still in the band, and Louden is the newest addition, having joinedthe group in November 2004.
The band came to fruition after an impressive opportunity that members of Fat Tuesday, Bell's previous band, were offered nine years ago.
They opened for "The Originator" Bo Diddley, who often toured without a backup band and instead opted to have his openers extend their set by playing alongside him.
Given this opportunity to join the legendary Diddley on stage, they changed a few things, including their moniker, and the band progressed quickly from there, thanks to that big break.
Years before joining the band himself, Louden remembers the first time he saw the Kelly Bell Band's live show, about eight years ago at the Recher Theater in Towson.
"I was blown away because I'd never heard anything like it before," Louden said. "It was a great band playing cool tunes, and Kelly had the crowd in the palm of his hands. It was a powerful thing."
The band's close ties to Baltimore -- all of the members currently reside in Charm City and originally hail from either Baltimore or nearby Washington, D.C. -- helps them to find their own niche in the music scene, according to Louden.
"What we do is unique in the Baltimore area and unique in general," Louden said. "Here our main audience is college kids, who might not usually listen to blues music."
He also noted that Baltimore's location is very advantageous to the band because touring to other major Mid-Atlantic and East Coast cities involves manageable travel distances.
Regardless of where the Kelly Bell Band is performing, what matters most are, of course, the live shows themselves.
"No two performances are alike," Louden said.
The laid-back nature of phat blues music, combined with the band's strong instrumental talents and Bell's onstage charisma, guarantees that even the most die-hard fans will be in for a surprise or two at every Kelly Bell Band performance.
Much of the Kelly Bell Band's live act involves getting the audience actively engaged with the music.
"The band starts the energy, and then whatever energy comes back from the crowd really pumps us up," Louden said. "The atmosphere is all about the fans."
Even concertgoers who are new to the Kelly Bell Band can quickly get into the shows -- they're likely to find themselves bobbing their heads at first, soon followed by swaying to the beat of the more mellow songs, and by the end of the show, they'll be singing along and freely dancing to the catchy hooks in the choruses.
"We like to involve the audience, from getting girls dancing onstage to Kelly sharing his sense of humor between songs," said Louden. "We play for a broad range of crowds, so we tailor the performance to the audience. We play to the room."
Though the Kelly Bell Band plays at numerous venues and festivals, they particularly enjoy performing in front of a college-aged crowd
"The cool thing about playing at a college is that there are lots of people who have never seen us perform before," Louden said.
He noted that since there are new students from all over the country and the world coming to Hopkins and other local universities each year, when the Kelly Bell Band has a show at a campus, they are reaching a different audience and gaining a new crop of potential fans every time.
When the Kelly Bell Band comes to Spring Fair this Sunday, students can hear and, for the rhythmically inclined, gyrate and dance away to the band's self-described "phat beats" for themselves.
Louden says that all of the band members are looking forward to their upcoming performance at Hopkins.
"I think it will be a good time. There will be some people who have heard us before and know the songs, and there will be some people who are wondering, 'What the hell is this?'" he said. "It's going to be a slamming show."
The Kelly Bell Band will perform on the Shriver stage Sunday, May 1st, from 4:30 to 6 p.m.
