Charlie Wooten said that the name of his new band, Zabadodat, a word he made up, but throughout the show and Laura Reed mentioned that it basically means “love.” And that was a good theme for the evening, as the band and Reed sent love out to the audience and got it back in abundance.

The place was packed. I don’t mean just “the tables are full” packed. I mean you could barely walk in the room packed. We had waited until a couple of days before to make reservations and ended up seated at the bar (which was fine, but is just to show how crowded the place really was..) Many people were standing. And yet some brave dancers still managed to strut their stuff around the stage.

We almost all knew Charlie Wooten and knew to expect his usual high level of musicianship from himself and his band, but Laura Reed was a very pleasant surprise. She is at small person, but there is nothing small about her voice or her stage presence. She gave everything a sultry, sexy Island vibe, Percussionist Rafael Parrera underscored that feeling, and Wooten on bass, Mike Phillips on drums, and Daneil Groover on lead guitar, all contributed to the positive energy as Reed sang in English, Spanish and Portuguese. It was more jazz than blues but absolutely no one was complaining.

Most of the music was new and so I did not know the names of the songs, but there was a stellar version of “yellow Moon,” which let the whole band weave some magic, as they did throughout the evening.

On Facebook,, Zabadodat featuring Laura Reed is described as “good energy and loving music” and that pretty well sums it up. And who doesn’t want to be a part of that?