Voodoo Talking Heads

Canan & Co.: slippery, flippy, floppy, jammy

The first big show of the year in St. Louis was actually a twofer: Voodoo Talking Heads took over the Pageant for two nights over the weekend. It was a double-shot dance-party residence that provided a get-out-of-the-house opportunity for St. Louisans after New Year’s Eve and before the impending phallic-shaped winter storm that was bearing down on the area.

Voodoo Talking Heads was actually already Voodoo honcho Sean Canan’s second on-stage appearance at the Pageant in 2025 since the Voodoo Funky Butt Brass Band team of superfriends opened for Andy Fraso’s New Year’s Eve bash, a show that spilled past midnight and officially into ‘25. Which means that Funky Butt trumpeter Adam Hucke, who plays the David Byrne role in the Talking Heads tribute, and guitarist Jim Peters, were also making their second Pageant appearance of the year.

For the uninitiated, Canan’s Voodoo bands are a rotating stable of St. Louis musicians who take on different artists (or themes) for joyful, musically rich, jam-charged tribute shows. They play every Wednesday night at Broadway Oyster Bar (this month is Jerry-uary with four consecutive Wednesdays of Jerry Garcia-related shows) but will also stage dozens of weekend concerts at several venues around town, making for some 100-plus shows to look forward to in 2025.

A lot of the merriment in attending a Voodoo show is watching how much fun Canan has on stage, and during Friday night’s Talking Heads show, Sean was especially animated all night. Part of that aerobic energy was thanks to the Stop Making Sense-style calisthenics requirements, as the band is constantly in motion, jogging around the stage and wiggling in various arms-flailing, knees-akimbo attitudes. Still, it was clear that these Talking Heads tunes were among Sean’s very favorite setlists to replicate.

That recreation included opening the show the way Talking Heads opened Stop Making Sense: with a completely empty stage. A couple of friends in our group, sitting in the GA section on stage right, were befuddled by that blank stage, wondering audibly, “Where are all the instruments?” prompting other folks around us to turn to us and say, “Oh, you’ve never seen this show before!” Those return customers demonstrate how the Voodoo Talking Heads show has taken off, joining the likes of El Monstero and Celebration Day as local tribute acts popular enough to command multi-night engagements at the Pageant.

So, as with Stop Making Sense, the show started with Byrne/Hucke—the gray suit, the white tennis shoes—carrying a boombox and saying, “Hi. I’ve got a tape I wanna play” before performing a solo-guitar version of “Psycho Killer” complete with canned backing beats and those Byrne-specific, herky-herky, stumbling dance moves around the stage.

Then, slowly, one by one, the rest of the band—and their instruments, mic stands, monitors, amps—make their way to the stage until the entire stage is filled with the eight-piece band pumping out a blast of disco-funk rhythms. It’s quite a production feat for this many moving parts to assemble this smoothly and seamlessly without losing a quarter-note of sound or any hitches within these complex arrangements.

Bassist Bill Newmann appeared next, alongside singer-songwriter Hillary Fitz, who played acoustic guitar and sang backup vocals on “Heaven.” By the end of the song, Canan took his customary spot at stage left, layering in his electric guitar brocade. Next, drummer Jonathan Taylor glided onto the stage atop his kit—he pantomimed paddling an oar as stagehands rolled him into position—in time for the end of “Thank You For Sending Me an Angel.”

Aviators-clad jazz-chord specialist Peters waded out next to add second guitar to “Found a Job.” Then, keys consigliere Spanky Manaois coasted out while waving like he was the homecoming king on a keyboard-themed parade float and was in place in time for “Slippery People.” The final piece was percussionist Sean Anglin, who played bongos on “Slippery” before climbing into his full rig for “Road to Nowhere.” And just like that, the stage was full.

“Road to Nowhere” showcased the band’s five-part a cappella vocal harmonies and represented the night’s first diversion, after a five-song opening run, from the Stop Making Sense setlist, before skipping ahead to other SMS songs and also throwing in a 2001 David Byrne solo tune, “Like Humans Do,” to keep the real Heads Heads on their toes.

Set Two got even weirder, trippier, jammier, drummier, and deeper into the Talking Heads songbook, and shout out to Bobby Scharff for the lightshow designs that helped bring the colorful kaleidoscope to life.

Hey, let’s do it this way: Some outstanding moments from each of the eight band members.

Hucke. Byrne, baby, Byrne. It’s something when one of the best trumpet titans in the Interior Plains can put on a performance this great without ever touching his horn. Adam pulled out all the stops—singing, dancing, wearing the big jacket for “Girlfriend is Better,” paddling the giant hands during “Born Under Punches,” tossing out long-stemmed carnations during “(Nothing But) Flowers.” (And also inadvertently breaking a lamp while trying to make like Fred Astaire during the “This Must Be a Place” encore.) Vocally, Hucke doesn’t so much do a Byrne impression as embody the spirit of the music while still bringing his own vocal style to the songs. For his vocal peak, I’ll nominate “Take Me to the River,” which combined Byrnsian quirk with old-fashioned soul shouting. (Canan before that song: “We got more rivers around here than they got motherfuckin’ lakes in Minnesota!”)

Canan. Sean mostly stuck to guitar fireworks, but he took a couple of great vocal turns himself, especially on “Like Humans Do” and “Nothing But Flowers.” Plus, on the night-closing “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody),” his love of the song really got a hold of him as he waltzed the stage guitar-less, singing into a handheld mic, which you don’t see very often. But he was on fire on the Stratocaster, and, as usual, it’s impossible to pick one Sean solo for a medal. But his melodic, climbing ripper on “Like Humans Do” was one of his tastiest solos in a night full of them. And he saved his trippiest Voodoo sauce for a wide-ranging guitar epic on “Life During Wartime.”

Spanky. One of the most dependable wingmen of all the Voodoo Players, Spanky can do it all. He provided a lot of the funk-burple flourishes and melodic stability (and backup vocals) that held songs like “Once in a Lifetime” together, but he also got the direct spotlight a few times, bending notes on “Cities” and going Hydrasynth crazy with the waveshaping on “Girlfriend is Better” and slip-’n’-slide mutating on “What a Day That Was.”

Jim. One of the bi-state area’s most versatile guitarists, Peters was charged with supplying a lot of the percolating rhythms and shimmying pulses that drive the Heads’ music. Peters is also, of course, an excellent soloist, and I’ll give the best-of nod to his bubbling, polyphonic, whammy-bar-assisted solo during “Take Me to the River.” Moreover, Jim had a couple of terrific lead-vocal moments—on “Wild Wild Night,” one of the night’s highlights, and his operatic passages on “Born Under Punches.”

Hillary. Fitz fans—Afitzianados, they’re called—were able to watch Hillary do Jazzercise moves all night as a one-woman disco inferno. Her vocals were mostly limited to the high harmonies, a critical component of the overall sonic wash, but, thankfully, she got her own moment—singing, rapping, soaring—in front as the band played the percolating Tom Tom Club classic “Genius of Love.”

Bill. We don’t see this Griddle Kids bassist in Voodoo shows often, but on a night defined by relentless grooves, Bill was a rhythm rock, staying in the funkometer pocket throughout. I’ll give the award to his stiletto stabs in “Once in a Lifetime” or those calypso octave-leaps during “Flowers.”

Jonathan. He’s one of my favorite drummers thanks to his superclean, economical style, and he was a metronomic machine for three hours, locking into those motorik beats like he has the atomic clock in his brain. This is one of the most relentlessly rhythm-rigorous of all Voodoo shows, and JT was the dance-party hero. Highlight: His sensational snarework and hi-hat hijinks during the second-set drum solo.

Anglin. The former One Fell Swoop skinsman is a frequent Voodoo flyer, but he often lives back in the shadows where it’s hard to appreciate how flippy he’s making all the floppy. But with his huge kit lofted high at the Pageant, Anglin had lots of time to shine, including that second-set drum showcase, but for the rest of the night too. Example: He was generating serious heat on the congas during “Big Business.”

I wasn’t there for the Saturday night show, which started a little early to try to get ahead of the sleet and snow, but I was glad to get the encore of “This Must Be the Place” on Friday, which didn’t make the setlist on Saturday. (Of the entire Stop Making Sense film/album, only “Swamp” went unplayed on Friday.) Overall, Voodoo Talking Heads is, so far, the show of the year.

And you may ask yourself, “Will anything take its place?” Stay tuned. We’ll take that ride.

Photos: Ky Katzman, Susan Troiani