Gary Lindsey & the Pleasure Tide

Gary Lindsey’s not a man you’d expect to be leading a gospel service, but then, his isn’t a typical gospel. For the past eight years, Lindsey unleashed his Pleasure Tide monthly at the Lost Well, transforming the Webberville Road dive bar into a raucous and righteous communion of rhythm.

“At first it was just wanting to have fun with friends, singing about drinking,” offers Lindsey of the residency, which ends this Saturday. “But as time went by, it literally helped me to recognize the connection I have with the entire universe right now. I know that sounds melodramatic, but it’s absolutely true. What was at first just something to get together and celebrate, came to mean a celebration between spirits and between souls.”

Behind Lindsey’s dieseled growl, the octet (which features Lindsey’s fellow Chronicle contributor Kevin Curtin) preaches a folk-punk sermon of hard times, hard liquor, and hard fast community, united by a string theory of universal harmonics. Especially following the pandemic, the Pleasure Tide shows spewed with a joyous evangelizing of interconnection.

“We are all a living song,” Lindsey declares. “And when everyone comes out and we toast and we have that togetherness for that one moment, they’re doing it for that message.”