St. Angelo's Rocks, Too

Most Smyrna-Vinings residents are familiar with St. Angelo's Pizza, as the South Atlanta Road restaurant focuses on using fresh, high-quality ingredients to make delicious pizza.

I've never had a bad pizza from St. Angelo's. The sauce is tasty, the varieties of toppings are endless and they have specialty pizzas, too. In addition, the wings, calzones, strombolis, salads and gelato are pretty rocking.

Speaking of rockin', St. Angelo's features live music every Thursday night from 9 to 12. Last week I decided to check out St. Angelo's house band, Aaron & Friends, which is comprised of Aaron Francis on guitar and lead vocals, Andy Anderson on bass and Trevor Roberts on drums.

All the music greats know that it's not enough to simply play the notes; one has to live the music and feel it with every breath. When Aaron & Friends began to play last week, something amazing happened – and was felt by all – as the notes and reverberations of their musical elixir filled the room.

The set opened with "The World is a Ghetto,'' followed by "Cold Shot" and "Hey Joe.'' As the band continued to play, I noticed an accumulation of instruments. Why, you ask?  Well, Thursday night at St. Angelo's is quite the jam session, as many well-known local musicians stop by and join Aaron & Friends. Daniel Ekas popped in to bid farewell to his jam session friend as he was moving back to Pennsylvania the next day.

Last Thursday's mix also included Clark Atlanta University professor and leader of the SaNa Foster Blues Band, Sandra "SaNa" Foster, Clarence Carter's bassist, Tony Barnett, trumpet master, Stephen Farmer, YoungBloodz's guitarist, Randall Rivers and the guitarist who is so great, like Madonna he goes by one name, Charlie.

Drummer Paul Linney should have played that night, but being the perfect gentleman, he chose to keep me company, as I was sitting at a table alone. I owe you one, Paul!

I was graced with a tantalizing mix of several blends of blues. It was like the perfect blues cocktail … a good base of slow, bluesy ballads and rollicking blues with a twist of jazz. Ahhh, pour me another please!

St. Angelo's night manager, Cary Lee, is responsible for bringing live music to the venue on Thursday nights. In fact, Cary is quite the master of pizza dough and demonstrated a few dough-tossing techniques that wowed me.

We all have a band we like to see on a regular basis, in our favorite little club, in our own little part of the world. 

St. Angelo's is now mine because the amount of talent found there on Thursday nights absolutely boggles the mind.  It's a great place with a cool vibe. Definitely, check it out!