Pop Music Reviews : Drive of Folk-Rock Is the Key to Health & Happiness Show

Jacks Sugar Shack became an East Coast rock cultist’s dream on Thursday, with an ex-Bongo and an ex-Television anchoring the Hoboken band the Health & Happiness Show. Then it was a modern-folk cultist’s dream, with the West Texas sage Butch Hancock performing with the band.

In his usual solo acoustic mode, Hancock has no shortage of energy and volume. But the rock-band context added drive and color to his tales of long roads, long trains and affairs of the heart.

At the start of a national tour together, band and singer took a few minutes to find their footing, but once they did they rolled through a landscape of rockabilly, blues, garage-rock, country and Dylanesque folk-rock before shifting into a final stretch of “let’s play one we haven’t done before.”

Sometimes raw and barely formed, sometimes showing signs of planning and arrangement, the music was governed by a rare spirit of discovery and spontaneity.

The Health & Happiness Show’s James Mastro, formerly with guitar-pop heroes the Bongos, gave a capsule review of his own band as it began its opening set, promising “songs of misery and pain but presented in a cheerful and upbeat manner.”

The foursome’s folk-rock has an infectious drive, setting Mastro’s deep, dusky voice in rough-hewn textures. Touring member Richard Lloyd, best known as Tom Verlaine’s guitar partner in the band Television, constantly pushed and challenged the musical structures, adding tension and momentum without overshadowing the songs’ essence.