Eric Whitfield
Thai Kitchen
Baton Rouge
May 14
When saxophonist Eric Whitfield plays music at Thai Kitchen, he’s reading the room. How many people are there? How old are they? Are they engaged in the music or trying to have a conversation? How many drinks do they have to get in them before they start to dance in their seats? That’s how he determines his set for the night.
“This crowd is usually pretty sedate, so I don’t want to play too loud or too fast,” he explained in an interview between sets.
Whitfield has been playing the saxophone for 57 years, and he knows how to adjust on the fly. From the corner of the Thai Kitchen dining room Thursday night, he played a mix of jazz, old hip hop, and popular music with a backing track. Thai Kitchen is a regular gig for him. He plays once a month, and every set is different because every crowd is different. (The restaurant has live music regularly on Thursday nights.)
Whitfield said that he likes to play recognizable tunes, like Pharrell Williams’ “Happy.” The backing track is so distinctly “Happy” that even when he riffs and plays his own interpretations on the melody, people can hear the song in their heads.
There’s a transportative power in Whitfield’s playing. His hands glide over the keys on the sax with an ease that comes from decades of practice. This isn’t even him at his best, he told me; he’s been experiencing “leaking,” so some of the pads aren’t sealing right on his instrument.
“I can’t really do my runs. I’m sitting here having to really think,” he said. “But the people who don’t know, don’t know.”
It was a little more noticeable toward the beginning of the evening, but as he got settled in, he figured it out. Over dinner, it was easy to forget that I was sitting by myself at the restaurant. Or that the couple next to me seemed to be one careless sentence away from starting a fight. Looking around I saw heads bopping, and even the service staff was clapping and cheering between songs.
Whitfield could have chosen to come in, play music, and then leave. It would have been an OK night. But he also came around to tables where people seemed engaged in the music, to serenade them personally. When one table in the back had a birthday, he paused our interview to play a rendition of happy birthday with a surprise beat drop.
Some live music experiences stand out because of the high production budgets, the expensive gear or the amazing sound systems. Whitfield is clearly talented, but the attention he pays to his audience feels like a gift in it of itself. People may or may not be watching him. But he’s watching them.
