Mia Zuniga
February 2nd, 2008 - Berkeley
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Reviewed by Katy St. Clair
You know you are creating great music when people who just showed up to shop end up gravitating to your instore performance. "Where are you from?" asked one on-looker at the Mia Zuniga Amoeba appearance last Saturday. He could have just as easily been saying, "Dang, where did you come from? How come I have never heard you before?" The young Zuniga laughed and said that she was from the East Bay suburb of Pittsburgh, but that Berkeley was her adopted home. Then she and her band lit into another of her signature soulful, jazzy songs.
You know you are creating great music when people who just showed up to shop end up gravitating to your instore performance. "Where are you from?" asked one on-looker at the Mia Zuniga Amoeba appearance last Saturday. He could have just as easily been saying, "Dang, where did you come from? How come I have never heard you before?" The young Zuniga laughed and said that she was from the East Bay suburb of Pittsburgh, but that Berkeley was her adopted home. Then she and her band lit into another of her signature soulful, jazzy songs.
Mia's band may just be bigger than Earth Wind and Fire, with a man on trumpet, a sax player, two drummers (one of which was wearing a rather fetching gold lamé jacket ... cool!), two guitarists and a bass player.
She seemed a twinge nervous at the beginning of the set, but once the music started she became possessed by the spirit of a much older and more confident woman. Her songs are about hope, God, and transitions-- new love, old love, homelessness, dreams, and yes, like any musician worth their salt, she even pulls out the occasional Pat Benatar cover.
After an opening song set a sultry mood with her tender vocals and funky organ backup, she quickly transitioned into the title track from her record, Stories Such as These. "Hush baby don't you cry, gonna sing you a lullaby," she crooned. It was as if she were trying to rock the audience to sleep, or at least into a pleasant lull. The guitar danced in and out of a steady bass and drum backbeat.
"I'll be your home, your shelter..." she continued, as the song trickled into a spirited sax solo. By then people had surrounded the stage from all over the store. Suddenly, one of them got up on stage.
"Do you mind if I speak to them for a second?" he asked. But this wasn't just any onlooker, this was Tyson, who has been performing with Mia for awhile.
The music swooped and jumped from jazz to soul to rock, with creative time changes that started and stopped like a disco robot. "You were the one who took the time to read between the lines," he rapped. The song had obvious Christian overtones, with Tyson adding, "I'm proud to be the Creator's creature!"
Soon their voices were weaving in and out of one another, with Mia declaring, "Don't you know the strong woman cries?" and Tyson responding with his own message of hope. All the while the band swelled into a crescendo and then slowly eddied back into a whisper and faded out to rich applause.
But it was the final song that brought down the store. As promised, she ripped into a Benatar cover, "Love is a Battlefield," a song that typified every message that she sang in her own songs--- the excited, scary uncertainty of relationships; trying to stay empowered, and, yeah, good old fashioned rocking out. Mia tried to sell it to us, and man, we bought it. Anyone who can take Benatar's arguably least interesting song and make it her own, not to mention waaaay better (and funkier) than the original deserves massive praise. Mia is someone to watch, and we were lucky enough to be right there with her.
