Frank Hurricane, Very Very Hot Evil, Terra Cotta, Patrice Poor
Upstairs at Abyssinia
229 S 45th St.
Philadelphia
Feb. 12, 2026
Shrimp. Off the chain. Shrimping. Spiritual. Off the rails. Hainted. Holy. Sacred. Deep-throating. Girth-Worm Jim. Manimal.
Most likely you’re reading this and wondering what the hell I’m talking about, but if you’ve ever seen the great Frank Hurricane live, or listened to his records, you know this is just his hyper-specific, vivid vernacular at work. In Hurricane’s world – which I was spiritually blessed to be a part of last night, during his closing set at Abyssinia — shrimp is shrymp; it’s a parts-of-speech catch-all that functions sort of like jawn, a versatile lexical peppering his sentences as though of its own accord. (It shrymps his speech, really.) Hainted? That, of course, is a portmanteau of haunted and tainted, as in, “This motel brunch is hainted by shrymps.” Spiritual is more like spirichul, shaving off a syllable. The rest is self-explanatory, though for Girth-Worm Jim, maybe you had to be there. And to cut to the chase, you had to be there! Hurricane was awesome.
But before we get too holy, I’ve got to shout out two other performances that were exemplary in their own way. We’ve covered Terra Cotta before, but this time the room was packed out and seated for more of a full-band treatment, with John Moran Jr. on upright bass and Joey Sullivan on drums, and their presence really brought the bright, syncopated charm of Gabriel García-Leeds’ songwriting to the forefront. The band played as though in their living room, seated around a table with shakers, beers, and a pair of apples (all five members took at least a bite); everyone sounded great, but I was especially thrilled by violinist Samantha Cody’s mastery, including the melodic use of artificial harmonics throughout a 6/8 piece. (A technique I didn’t know about until literally yesterday! Shout outs to Rob Moose and the Dead Wax podcast; listen to Nina Simone’s version of “Baltimore” for an example. Just because she’s the GOAT.) I was also impressed in a major way by Very Very Hot Evil, performing solo on electric piano, and absolutely shredding the thing: big, wide chords and octaves in the right hand, hyper melodic and active bass arpeggios in the left, all in the service of dense and heartfelt lyric-driven songs that were both personal and painterly.
Hurricane is a vagabond DIY lifer, road warrior and holy adventurer currently calling Philly home after stints all over the south, where he’s from, and to see him live is to go on a mind adventure. Hurricane was recently the subject of an award-nominated mini-doc about his music and lifestyle, and in addition to his considerable talents as a singer, guitarist and writer, he’s a good-time storyteller, hilarious and weird, constantly invoking the sacred while illustrating the profane in a way that brings the two irrevocably together. Long, shaggy stories between songs – like the origin of his “trail name,” Manimal, the saga of Girth-Worm Jim, the caloric power of deep-throating Snickers bars on a brisk, frisky hike – are told breathlessly, his eyes shut as though transported, and always hilarious, and often longer than the songs themselves. Hurricane never fails to win the room over, to induce a light-hearted and humorous atmosphere that simultaneously achieves the sweet goal of getting you to appreciate the little things, to notice that even the passed-over and weird details are sacred. He’s our local titan of loving life and spreading psychedelic sacred love, and we’re blessed to have him. Long may you run, Frank.
