Something Fishy About Snave and the Third Stream

Musician David Snave Evans has lent his perpetual bedhead and considerable talents on a multitude of instruments to many a local combo, most recurrently Mudcat. Much of that band’s rollicking, rootsy, genre-mixing gumbo carries over to Tin Can Fish House, his new live album recorded with a band he calls Snave and the Third Stream.

Captured on a June night in 2018 at the now-closed Sandy Springs restaurant Tin Can Fish House & Oyster Bar, the quartet (Snave on guitar, flute and lead vocals, Tim Crump on saxophone, Jon Schwenke on bass and Will Groth on percussion) weaves its way through a crop of vintage covers both familiar (Donovan’s “Season of the Witch,” Gershwin’s “Summertime”) and not so familiar (Vince Guaraldi’s “Little Birdie,” Mose Allison’s “Mind on Vacation”), along with one Snave original, with approaches veering from groovy shuffles to paint-peeling freakouts and an overall spirit of exploration that owes as much to jazz as it does more typical jam band meanderings. Placed inconspicuously in the middle of it all is a stirring rendering of “Just a Little Bit,” an incredible song by the Georgia-based group Little Country Giants that is both the most restrained cut on the album and the most emotionally gripping.

Currently available on Snave and the Third Stream’s bandcamp page, but CDs are planned soon.