Writer: Robert Gonzales
On Tuesday, January 23rd, FUNGKSHUI drove up from Asbury Park, NJ, to play in the Capital Region and Vermont, but first stopped at Snug Harbor in New Paltz to share their vibrations. Snug Harbor is a small dive bar in New Paltz, NY. One gets the feeling that this is a local “where everybody knows your name” kind of place. None of the patrons seemed to know music was happening that night, nor did they know of the band that was about to play.
Upon arriving, we did recognize a group of people from Albany. It was the Lark Hall! Jen and Justin were there with Neil and Lauren! Lark Hall are big fans of FUNGKSHUI and have single handedly made Albany a 2nd home for them. Fungkshui will forever play Albany because of how well they have been treated by Jen and Lark Hall. Not only was the band staying in Albany all week at the musician apartment in Lark Hall, Jen has reached out to them on previous trips to Albany where they weren’t even playing at Lark Hall to offer the apartment since it wasn’t being used by the talent that night. That’s family, right there!
So naturally, with Lark Hall being such good fans they traveled down to see them. I figured with FUNGKSHUI traveling all the way from New Jersey, I could at least drive down to New Paltz to support them. It was a small gig. They packed into the little stage and set up all their gear. After soundcheck, they kicked off the show with “Ready To Go” which would be a segue and recurring theme of the night. FUNGKSHUI was rocking it out and melting the faces of their limited audience. It goes to show what kind of people FUNGKSHUI are that they played their butts off for this dive bar with the same intensity I‘ve seen them play at huge venues and festivals.
For the first set, their mix on stage in the monitors weren’t quite dialed in. It sounded great in the audience, but the musicians had issues with hearing everyone properly. The keyboard player sang two songs but couldn’t hear himself play or sing. Playing and singing blind without hearing yourself well in the monitors is hard to pull off. He contributes with ambient sounds and fills in the gaps. There aren’t many gaps; so, it was nice to see the band trying to get more out of him with his songwriting and singing contributions.
The 2nd set was dialed in a little more, and the guys flowed through funk after jam of awesomeness. Watching the looks of the faces of the patron of Snug Harbor was priceless. Everyone was amazed at FUNGKSHUI and their ability and willingness to rock it out for us! People came in and listened and bought merch from them just to support them. These are the kinds of gigs where you get some of your biggest and most loyal fans. There were a few people at the bar bopping their heads that were definitely looking up FUNGKSHUI online to catch more of this unbelievable band.