Koffee With Kommie’s own Matt Robert is also on this bill. I’ll be playing two John Sebastian tunes, plus one each by Country Joe and Arlo Guthrie. Peace!
Koffee With Kommie’s own Matt Robert is also on this bill. I’ll be playing two John Sebastian tunes, plus one each by Country Joe and Arlo Guthrie. Peace!
Lovers will get a chance to check out two new things around town this weekend with a special Valentine’s Day show by Dan Burke and the Royal Treatment at Electric Haze, on Millbury Street, on Friday, February 14th.
Dan Burke should need no introduction, as he has been crooning and laying keyboards for years in local clubs with a bevy of acts, from Gamble & Burke and Niki Luparelli and the Gold Diggers to The Orange Ocean, as well as being a regular feature at Nick’s, where he performs solo, guests at shows, such as the Duke Ellington tribute last year, and now appears with his latest outfit, The Royal Treatment.
“My favorite stuff is really chilled out RnB music,” says Burke. “I love singer-songwriter stuff, too.” All this, he says, comes out in The Royal Treatment, but the “main pocket right now is RnB and pop,” both original and covers.
In a world gone roots and vintage, where old is new, what is old is good, and even mainstream acts wield mandolins, banjos, and dusty fedoras, The Royal Treatment is a breed apart.
Burke and company – Jeff Killebrew (drums, backing vocals), Eli Mateo (percussion), Sean Rosati (guitar), and Imer Diaz (bass) – like things just the way they are today.
“We’re not going to be like Amy Winehouse,” Burke says, “trying to record on analog tape or anything like that.”
He says that the band is pretty comfortable with the modern version of RnB, stuff like John Legend, Justin Timberlake, Robin Thicke, and, of course, Michael Jackson.
So, while he says band members share a common love of Motown, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson, he adds, “If I had to put us on one side of the spectrum, I would put us on the modern side.”
So, understandably, the band is bright and poppy. Diaz, formerly of local progressive rock act Miars, is a virtuoso, who lays thick but bright six-string bass. (“Imer is an absolutely sick bass player and a super humble sweet guy,” says Burke.) Killebrew, who cut his teeth on the church circuit, playing gospel organ, offers up straight-up RnB grooves that, when combined with Diaz’s smooth bass lines and Rosati’s chorused up skanking rhythm or chunky, fluid jazz lines and Mateo’s latin percussion, should offer plenty to get all but the most sedentary attendees onto the dance floor.
And that’s just what the band wants. The Valentine’s show hopes to get couples moving, and a repertoire of accessible pop tunes (Justin Timberlake’s “Until the End of Time,” Cody Chestnutt’s “Till I Met Thee,” and Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana”) as well as some old school material (“disco-y anthems and James Brown,” says Burke), and Electric Haze’s high quality in-house p.a. system, should have the place thumping.
“It’s going to be a dance party,” says Burke.
Add to this a guest appearance by band friend Limaaj, whose presence as a front man adds significant sexuality to the band’s performance, in a manner Burke likens to Andre 3000 and Prince, and you’ve got a formula for driving the chicks wild. Not only can he sing in the upper register style popular in RnB, but he is utterly comfortable before a crowd and engaging the audience.
The Royal Treatment will have recording gear on hand to run the live set direct to Pro Tools for later mixing, and, hopefully, a live release. “I’m psyched about that!” says Burke.
The band has high hopes for this project, about which Burke says it is “the best band [he’s] ever been in.”
“They’re Amazing players!” he says.
Beyond local gigging and recording, the band hopes to get involved in general business, and looks to get hired for functions. Further, returning to the variety show format that gave rise to the band in the first place (they met as session players for the B. Heard showcases held throughout Worcester a few years back), they intend to offer themselves as a band for hire for singers or players needing a backing group for gigs or recordings.
So, treat your special someone (or go stag!) to a night of fresh music in one of Worcester’s latest clubs, and look for the band in coming months for return engagements at Electric Haze, or any one of the band members’ solo shows at local clubs.
To learn more, visit http://www.facebook.com/DanBurkeAndTheRoyalTreatment.
Filed under Local Bands
Filed under Cd Review, Local Bands
by Matt Robert
Originally appeared in the November 21, 2013, issue of Worcester Magazine.
It’s Thanksgiving time again and that means reunions: family, friends and high school alums gather to catch up on old times. It’s also time for three old friends to reunite and make some music.
Tony Wilson, Todd Kosiewski and Bret Talbert, who made a pretty big splash in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s with a band called Public Works, will reunite for the first time in a decade on Thanksgiving Eve, November 27, at Ralph’s Rock Diner, in Worcester.
In the 10 years that the power-pop band operated, they went from high school pals emulating U2 to dominating the Worcester clubs, releasing 4 EPs, charting in England and touring the US in support of a major British act. The friendships have endured, they all seem pretty excited about the event and they still joke with each other like they might have on one of the interminable and inevitable car rides that form part of the band experience.
The event, which will be headlined by The Public Works, will also feature present-day heavyweights Herra Terra, as well as Ghost Ocean and Ritch Kids. Herra Terra, in fact, is a great contemporary complement to Public Works as a similarly edgy, forward thinking act with national potential. In their day, The Public Works brought a polished, aggressive and serious-faced act to the stage, with a visual style to match their aural sense, initially influenced by U2 and Echo and the Bunnymen, and then by important local acts, like Childhood, The Three Believers and The Pale Nephews, who provided opening slots, became colleagues as Worcester headliners and Boston contenders.
A series of well-recorded EPs landed Public Works slots in Boston clubs, like TT the Bear’s and The Middle East, but it was the band’s third EP, 1988’s “American Electro-Pastel Surge,” recorded by Tom Hamilton (not of Aerosmith) at Boston’s legendary Synchro Sound, that signaled a new direction for the band. Transfixed by the lysergic sounds coming out of Manchester, England, as well as Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and influenced by local compadres The Pale Nephews, the band took the music deeper and infused their songs with more meaning.
Managing to slip the EP into the hands of their heroes, The Wonder Stuff, in the parking lot at The Paradise, the unlikely happened: The wonder Stuff invited the band on tour – eight stops, including New Jersey’s Stone Pony; Washington DC’s 9:30 Club; Atlanta’s Cotton Club; Austin’s Liberty Lunch; and two stops that the band members call the highlight of their time together: Montezuma Hall, at San Diego State University and The Palace, in Los Angeles. On tour, the band enjoyed the challenge of winning over new crowds nightly. The crowd at The Palace – a capacity crowd of about 2,500 – included Brian Setzer, Robbie Grey of Modern English, and (allegedly) Madonna.
The band’s success continued. Upon returning home, they earned an opening slot for rising British act, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, at The Paradise, where they had met The Wonder Stuff before, but had only dreamed of performing. Further, CUSM had asked the band to record a cover song for release as a b-side of one of their singles, fully paid for by the British act; and Robbie Grey, impressed with the act, worked with his own label to get The Public Works signed.
The single reached number 11 on the British charts, and the band felt that they were driving strong, but the gas tank was running low. First, their recently hired manager had walked off with money they had spent on merchandise and other band expenses (Bret estimates $1,000-1,500). Then, the record deal efforts by Grey, as well as their own attempts, failed. Music was changing in the early ‘90s, and record label sweeps of Boston sought heavier bands, like Seattle produced. The band felt like they were spinning their wheels.
A last EP, “Boondoggle,” was eventually completed, but didn’t bring the growth that the band had hoped it might. Tony accepted the offer to play drums on a record and on tour with upcoming Boston act, The Drop Nineteens, which ended as quickly as it began.
Fazed and tired, the band called it quits, finishing in the spring of 1994 with a show at Ralph’s, but not before making their mark and achieving a considerable level of success for a few local kids, cemented with their inclusion in respected local music chronicler, Brian Goslow’s, retrospective of late ‘70s to present Worcester rock.
Come on out to Ralph’s and check out a piece of Worcester’s rock heyday and a few of its promising acts of today on Wednesday, Nov. 27, at 9 p.m.
Filed under Local Bands
by Matt Robert
This article originally appeared in the Thursday, June 7, 2013, issue of Worcester Magazine.
Though the origins of the William Thompson Funk Experiment are low-key and comical, there’s nothing to laugh at with this solid, grooving outfit. Though the band maintains a laid-back attitude, it is a tight, expressive funk band that draws on lots of styles – both the expected and unexpected – to create a sound rooted in the traditions of funk and reggae, but cognizant of present styles, too.
The band, says guitarist Nick Sergeant, started out in the suburbs of Worcester as WTF, or “What the Funk,” and was long referred to by various plays on those initials. They had their eventual name handed to them at a Tammany Hall show a while back when a friend spontaneously announced them to the audience as the “William Thompson Funk Experiment.” The band rolled with it, and it’s been their name ever since.
William Thompson Funk Experiment brings its alternative, psychedelic funk to Tammany Hall in downtown Worcester for one of only a few area shows on Saturday, June 8.
Sergeant says that the band members bring a lot of variety to the stew. Though, he says, their collective favorite groups are Deep Purple and Ween, he also notes the influence of funk bands, like Lettuce and Parliament/Funkadelic, as well as cerebral rock groups, like Pink Floyd and Tool. Then, there’s the jazz background of the two members who attended Berklee. Last, he says, front man Nico Ramey brings some hip-hop and R&B flavor.
“Ocean Jam,” from last year’s “Shine Time,” sums up the band’s approach pretty well, bookending a rocking funk jam with a chill, ambient groove. Guitarist Nick Sergeant negotiates each vibe, offering ethereal whale calls and glistening, chorused chord fills in the mellow jam, and a balls-out wah-wah solo in the funk portion. Keyboardist Justin Bradley demonstrates high-level chops and intimate familiarity with vintage keys sounds, laying down chunky, spaced out Rhodes and wild synth pitch bending, with tones right off of ’70s records, by the likes of Pink Floyd, Herbie Hancock, or Weather Report.
Combined with Elote Villanueva’s soaring soprano sax soloing, and the faraway, freakout lyrics of front man Nico Ramey, twisted with digital delay, the tune really cooks, with great band interplay, big chops, and wide dynamics. It is a sonic delight.
The rhythm section of Adam Casten (bass) and Tim Hetu (drums) is just what you’d expect – and want – from a funk band: tight, dynamic, and potent.
The live act is a stoner party on stage, with steady dance grooves and a broad sonic palate of horns, keys, guitar, dubstyle rapping, and plenty of histrionics and ear candy, perfect for club music and perfect for the dancing Tammany throng, which loves WTFE.
It’s no surprise that the band has made its biggest impact in front of festival crowds, and has become a three-year regular at the Strange Creek Festival in Greenfield, Mass.; last year’s Open Road Festival in Worcester; and the Camp Cold Brook Festival in Barre (the band plays it on June 21).
Sergeant says that the band does best in front of the varied crowds that festivals tend to draw and that they’ve picked up lots of fans in that environment. It’s easy to see how someone who might not be attracted to funk per se might hear things to enjoy in WTFE’s sound, which, as Sergeant says, mixes reggae, hip hop, metal, and jazz, among other things. Musicologists, as well as dancers looking to be swept away, might both enjoy the heady, yet sophisticated blends.
“Make Choices,” for instance, has a soundscape akin to “Ocean Jam,” but with Nico sounding more like Sublime’s Bradley Nowell rapping over a mid-tempo funk groove, hating on haters. Sweet swelling horns polish the arrangement, which mixes loads of ear candy, chunking and wahing guitar and steady, percussive Rhodes over high-watt, walking bass and complex, but meaty drums.
Sergeant says that the band broke out several new songs at the recent Strange Creek show, which fans can expect to hear at Tammany, too. The band, he says, which makes the rounds of southern New England venues, is conscious of overplaying the Worcester area, and books their dates carefully. In fact, the Cold Brook Festival is the last event they have booked at the moment, so, get out and hear them when this opportunity arises.
Catch WTFE live on Saturday, June 8 at Tammany Hall, 43 Pleasant St. at 8 p.m. The band’s album “Shine Time” is available online at cdbaby.com/cd/williamthompsonfunkexper and at shows. You can learn more and stream tracks at reverbnation.com/williamthompsonfunkexperiment.
Filed under Cd Review, Local Bands
by Matt Robert
Article originally appeared in the May 29th, 2013, Worcester Magazine
Back when I used to work in musical instrument retail at the Worcester branch of a New England chain, a kid in his late teens came in and started fiddling with some guitars. Seeing that he had chosen a nylon string classical-type, I opened my pitch with, “So, are you looking to learn classical guitar?” I was wholly unprepared for his response, which was, “Well, I mastered jazz, so I thought I would take up classical.”
I decided to leave him alone to master classical on the showroom floor.
Listening to the most recent release by the Galindo/Phaneuf Quartet, I now have that too-late response to that innocent youth’s comment: “Mastered Jazz? Okay, then, listen to this!” The Galindo/Phaneuf Quartet is what mastery of jazz sounds like, though the musicians here play with pious and disciplined seriousness and an absence of hubris and cliché that only a lifetime of devotion to craft can teach.
“Talkin’ Horns,” released this year, is a 12-track exploration of modern jazz in its totality, the type that emerged post-World War II, when the music transitioned from hot to cool, no longer acting as motivation for dancers, but as serious concert music.
Shockingly, the CD, recorded at Wellspring Studios, in Acton, Mass., was captured in one evening – nearly one and a half hours of really sophisticated stuff!
“Basically we ran through it in one night,” says Galindo by phone last week. “Every tune we recorded, except one, were all first takes. We usually did two takes of everything, but when we went back and listened to the stuff, we found the first take had the most fire and was overall the best.”
This is a startling revelation, considering the complexity of the work, both in terms of its intricate bebop heads and intuitive and dialedin free-jazz improvisation, which are balanced perfectly throughout.
“I mean, everyone can play well and knows the kind of material. There’s a lot of compositions, but there’s also a lot of improvisational interplay happening within the album,” says Galindo, “and these guys are some of the best at it.”
Indeed they are. These are musicians at the top of their field, a rarefied air of outrageous technical, historical, and intuitive musicianship, honed over decades in clubs, studios, and big stages around the world. Galindo alone, in addition to working on the Berklee faculty, has played with a who’s who of popular and jazz artists far too numerous to begin to name here.
“Talkin’ Horns” brings the combo to life with stunning fidelity and dynamics. The performances sound gorgeous, with lots of air and room. Over the mostly-original dozen tracks (except Duke Ellington’s “Angelica” and Bill Warfield’s “Kill Flow”), the quartet plays “Real Book” jazz, setting the tone with complex bop heads and then clearing space for wild improvisational jaunts that bring to mind the buoyancy of Charles Mingus and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the modal complexity of Thelonious Monk, and the hot and cool, but always risktaking soloing of Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane.
The latter is thanks to Mark Phaneuf’s alto and soprano sax work, which shows a generous Bird influence, and the killer rhythm section of John Lockwood, on acoustic bass, and Bob Gullotti, on drums, who swing hard, create beautiful bridges between head and solo, and continuously pave an extraordinary road over which the horns solo. The interplay is phenomenal, the instruments intuiting and coalescing serendipitously in spontaneous composition.
Overall, it hearkens to the classic small combos that dominated the ’40s and ’50s. With liberal use of big intervals, a wide range of pleasant and jarring tones, and time-bending segments that evoke a ’60s film soundtrack for episodes of psychosis, the band paints with a broad palate, always executing with mastery, precision, knowledge, and sensitivity to the composition and the other instruments.
Jeff Galindo’s trombone work adds a refreshing, warm and playful sound, as an instrument that has been essential to jazz history, though not often in as central a role as heard here. Galindo really explores the full range of the horn, from the woozy, boozy passages in “Sola Power” to the blazing runs and elephant roars in “Broadway Excursions.”
The tenor sax work of George Garzone, who appears on five tracks, adds warmth to the rich horn blend, creating further harmonic complexities that bring to mind Miles Davis’ Gil Evans’ arrangements.
This is heavy jazz – really serious music. Lovers of Michael Buble and Kenny G need not apply. This is the hard stuff, for jazz fans, not tourists.
Galindo, the recipient of a 2013 Worcester Arts Council grant, hopes to use the benefit to bring more of this kind of important jazz to Worcester. Despite a rich music scene, he says, jazz is hard to find around town. He plans to change this by bringing some of these top-shelf musicians to Worcester, such as the group’s performance last week at Volturno Pizza, in the old Edward Buick building on Shrewsbury Street.
Check out http://www.jeffgalindo.com or http://www.reverbnation.com/jeffgalindo for information and updates, and download a copy of this stellar CD at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/talkinhorns.
Filed under Cd Review, Local Bands
http://media.worcestermag.com/images/470*247/Jennings_Kim_story.jpgBy Matt Robert
Originally appeared in the May 2, 2013, Worcester Magazine.
Local singer-songwriter Kim Jennings may not have picked up the guitar until after college (her instrument of choice since then), but she has had a lifetime of music; and she may be young, but she hasn’t wasted any time pursuing her dreams.
http://media.worcestermag.com/images/Jennings_Kim_5420.jpg
Kim will celebrate the release of her sophomore effort, “Here Now,” with a concert at the Amazing Things Art Center, in Framingham on Friday, May 10, with fellow singer-songwriter and Massachusetts native Jesse Hanson opening the show. “She’s a phenomenal, young songwriter, multiinstrumentalist,” says Kim.
“So, we’ll do the whole thing: vocals and harmony singers and electric guitar and the full drums and all that good stuff and piano and all that – everything,” she says, adding that she’ll feature the “songs on the CD and probably…a couple of more acoustic songs from my last record.”
This rising star has been busy. After a childhood filled with music, she attended Harvard, where, as a member of choral and a cappella groups, she honed her celebrated voice, and performed all over the world.
Since graduating, she has released a four-song independent demo, “Draft,” in 2008, and a 13-song debut CD, “My Own True North,” in 2009; has won the 2010 Pulse Worcester Music Award for “Best Female Vocalist;” has been a fixture on the local circuit, including gigs at the prestigious Club Passim, in Cambridge; and last year completed a mini-tour of the pacific northwest.
If all that weren’t enough, this industrious folkie started her own record label, Birch Beer Records, with friend and fellow artist Dan Cloutier, which now has a stable of about five artists, including Kim, Dan, Levi Schmidt, Oen Kennedy, and Tom Smith, and has released about 12 albums.
But that’s not all! Kim and Dan also founded “I Support Local Music in Massachusetts” (the Facebook page has over 13,000 likes), a clubhouse for local musicians and supporters, with opportunities for writers who can contribute reviews, etc.
The CD release party will feature Kim with a backing band, a direction that follows from her new CD, which branches out from the strictly acoustic “True North”, and into new textures and emotions, many of them veering dangerously out of folk and into rock, backed by Dan, who adds rich, evocative flute and electric guitar; Eric Anderson, doubling on bass and drums; and Eric Salt, who adds percussion, while handling production duties, as well.
“We started the recording process back in October,” Kim says of “Here Now,” “but I’ve been writing music since my last CD came out in 2009. My first record is very acoustic driven whereas this one is much bigger sounding, with a full band and that sort of thing, with a lot of variety. There’s still some acoustic, but it’s much more of a bigger sound.”
“We wanted to do some live recording to get that really organic feel for the music. I wanted it to sound just really authentic and natural and so we were able to do great live drums with electric guitar and a number of vocal tracks as well as my acoustic guitar with piano recorded live.”
At the heart of the new CD is Kim, the folk songwriter, and the tunes still ring with the plain honesty of folk, shunning the platitudes, posturing, and sensationalism of commercial rock. She stills sings beautifully and delicately about things like the home she has built with her husband and child (“I Love You So”) and the innocence of playing outside in the snow (“Angel in Snow”), both of which glow with aching lead vocals and crystalline harmonies, and beautiful acoustic instrumentation.
With “Here Now,” however, she also explores edgier modes, such as on “Valley of the Shadow,” which is driven by fuzzed guitar and crisp drums, while Kim explores Old Testament trials and her pursuit of peace; and the pure rock of the opening track, “Get out of My Head,” on which she sings the regrets of a rocky relationship, while Dan invokes Middle Eastern motifs with tremolo and distortion. Several other tunes rock out, providing a nice balance of energetic numbers and ballads, while maintaining a tonal consistency throughout.
“The song that ended up being the title track was written later in the game,” Kim says. “The song is called ‘Here Now’ and, to me, there’s a sense of people wanting to find a place to belong; people have questions about what choices we have and sometimes we may make choices that are not always the best for us. You come from a place of asking questions about your life and where are you and a lot of it comes down to you want to feel like you belong somewhere.”
The Amazing Things show will benefit a charity organization close to Kim’s heart: “I’m doing a birthday fundraiser for an organization called Carrying Water,” she says, “which does fundraising projects for clean water in developing countries.”
After the event, she says, she will be “working on booking and balancing the rest of life. I’m planning another trip out to the Northwest. A little bit of travel, a little bit of touring and playing out as much as I can.”
“I’ve got a big book of film contract people and I’m trying to wrap my head around how to get some of the songs placed in that way,” she says, “and I’m playing out a bunch locally and figuring out where the music can go.”
The show, she says, will show “how my music has really evolved will be really fun for folks to see. It’s a departure for folks who haven’t seen me for a while, so it will be really fun for them.”
Don’t miss the CD release show for Kim Jenning’s newest album “Here Now” on Friday, May 10 at the Amazing Things Art Center, 160 Hollis St., Framingham at 8 p.m. amazingthings.org.
Filed under Cd Review, Local Bands