Review | Rock & Soul & Yule Revue

Christmas musical happenings stuffed the calendar in town this month, but there was nothing quite like the holiday wingding at the Lobero Theatre put on by Tina Schlieske, one of Santa Barbara’s most certifiably badass singers (sorry for the French, Santa). In a way, on this occasion, she was bringing a slice of her native turf to her adopted home, as a Minnesotan product long based here, finally bringing the holiday-timed show she’s performed in the Twin Cities for years to this hometown. 

An artist who has had brushes with broader fame and a diverse discography (link), Schlieske is now 59, a recently anointed grandmother and still alive, kicking and, as seen and heard last week, still with the power to magnetize a room (see Independent story here). 

Returning to the intimate historical embrace of the Lobero after last year’s jazz-flavored show on this stage in the wake of her torchy album The Good Life, Schlieske came out in swinging, semi-holiday-fied mode. The stage was suitably adorned with a resident Christmas tree and decorations, and a certain decorated door, through which musicians — mostly from Minnesota — entered, as if in a running shtick through a 1970s-era Christmas TV variety show. 

Yes, Schlieske invites pinches of kitsch into her world, such as her duet with sibling Laura on Irving Berlin’s “Sisters” and the moment when Tina channeled her suave inner Elvis impersonator on “Blue Christmas.” But she’s also on a serious musical mission, singing with soulful R&B-fired abandon, dipping into heartland rock ‘n’ roll belting, brandishing her might as a songwriter (e.g. “Everyday”), and generally winning us over. Yuletide spices appeared in the margins, from, for example, the mock-sinister seasonal plaything “I’m Mister White Christmas,” to Donny Hathaway’s seriously bodacious “This Christmas.”

Ultimately, Schlieske was joined onstage at the Lobero by 10 (count ‘em) musicians in the band, including an accomplished local horn section (saxist Andrew Martinez, trumpeter Phil Rodriguez and trombonist Mark Maynard) and a three-woman background chorus — the “ho ho ho singers.” (In that bunch was her frequent collaborator over the decades, the bold-voiced Laura, also a Santa Barbaran, who later wrapped her own pipes around a gorgeous version of Mel Torme’s “The Christmas Song.”) Among the Minnesotans-of-note was the impressive and well-known regional drummer Noah Levy, whose foundational force was felt as well as heard all night.

Schlieske opened up gently, in a voice-keyboard duet with the evening’s versatile music director Brian Ziemniak, in the brooding mood of George Harrison’s “Isn’t It a Pity.” She promised the crowd that the tears of the first song would transform into “tears of joy for the rest of the show.” Later in the show, she turned to another Beatle’s solo songbook, Paul McCartney’s Wings-era “Let ‘Em In,” which she had been reminded of after catching the Sir at the Bowl recently. She turned it into an all-too timely anthem of inclusivity.  

The second set opened with a gospel-ized version of “Bridge over Troubled Water,” suddenly seeming like a Christmas-suitable secular hymn, turned hip in this arrangement. The heat was cranked up and the band fever raged as Schlieske rose to the occasion of the Leon Russell tune “Space Captain” made famous by Joe Cocker, with its refrain “learning to live together,” another fine lesson for the current day. Like the Cocker album boasting that song, Mad Dogs & Englishmen, her version benefitted from a full and grooving band, with horns and singers in tow, and strong voice in the center.

The song’s idealistic refrain danced in the collective head of the crowd as the evening drew to its protracted close. The singer sauntered up through the aisles and lean versions of Mr. and Mrs. Claus danced to the music, passing out candy canes to the lucky ones in the house. In short, it was quite the holiday hoedown. Could this be a Santa Barbara Christmas tradition in the making?