POP MUSIC

Joey DeFrancesco

Jazz organist Joey DeFrancesco scratched something off his personal wish list at Blues Alley on Thursday night: the chance to play alongside tenor saxophonist and former Miles Davis sideman George Coleman.

The engagement, which runs through tomorrow, is being billed as a tribute to the late Jimmy Smith, the great Hammond B-3 organist who died in February. DeFrancesco shared a recording session with Smith shortly before his death, and during Thursday's performance he often evoked the master's touch, especially when the tempo was swift, as on "Mack the Knife."

Throughout the show, DeFrancesco marshaled a dramatic assortment of B-3 sounds -- scribbling single-note runs, sustained pedal tones, resonating bass lines and jabbing chords that often simulated a big band horn section. The ties to Smith's recording legacy were all the more apparent when guitarist Jake Langley contributed the sort of blues-tinted lines and ringing octave runs associated with Kenny Burrell and Wes Montgomery.

Coleman, however, placed his own stamp on the music. The 70-year-old Memphis-born reedman still loves to explore the full range of his horn, from chirping tones to bellowing honks. It took a while for him to get his footing, but his interpretations of "My Foolish Heart" and "Laura" were soulful and self-assured. The latter tune, which alternated bossa nova and swing grooves, also provided a colorful showcase for promising 24-year-old drummer Carmen Intorre.

A feverish, all-stops-pulled-out romp brought the opening set to a close -- the sort of freewheeling performance usually reserved for the other side of midnight.

-- Mike Joyce

Ike Reilly and Johnny Hickman

Arranging a double bill must be a tricky thing. Surprisingly, Thursday evening at Iota started with the belligerent multi-instrumentalist with the rowdy fan base and ended with the rock-band founder gone acoustic troubadour.

Ike Reilly's local followers have been waiting for his show for a long time, and the frontman of Chicago's Ike Reilly Assassination didn't disappoint. Accompanied by only one sideman, Phil Karnatz (on guitar and drums), Reilly whipped up a maelstrom of enthusiasm. Part of it was the duo's fratty, pseudo-punk attitude, which occasionally spread to back-and-forth taunts with the crowd and a couple of aborted songs. "I'm not feelin' it," said Reilly after just a couple of lines of the delicate "Edge of the Universe Café," but soon he picked it up again.

Behind the attitude lies a gifted performer and lyricist. Reilly's songs perch on a precipice with a view of both innocence and experience, past and future.

Johnny Hickman's songs were more soft-spoken and thematically varied -- but every bit as powerful. "Another Song About the Rain," from Cracker's first album, offered a rich acoustic-guitar setting for Hickman's smooth, brooding voice. His humor was droll: In "Friends," a song he said he wrote to crack up Cracker bandmate David Lowery, he sang, "I've got the dirt on you, you've got plenty on me, so I pray we stay together all our days." And "Styling the Dead" managed to be simultaneously moving and absurd, as Hickman portrayed a mortuary cosmetologist. Many of Reilly's near-moshing cheering section had moved on by the time Hickman got going, but his set wasn't a letdown as much as a gentle transition into the subtlety of the late waking hours. It was only midnight when the show ended, but it felt like a gloomily romantic quarter to three.