Mar Caribe started when Tom McGettrick (banjo, ukelele) and Tom Santiago (guitar) began trading simple riffs and unfinished songs with one another while sitting on a rooftop underneath an airline flight path. Soon Cole Blodgett (bass) and Jason Eckerson (mandolin, clarinet) joined in with their creative inventions as professionally schooled musicians accelerating the style toward whatever destination it is presently headed. This collaboration yielded a four song demo produced by Crushed Red Records. The four band members continued to write and perform music that combined Spaghetti Western, gypsy jazz, and bluegrass with a mildly tropical twist. As the evolution of the troupe continued Bob Frech (trumpet, drums) complimented the dynamic and further migrated the sound in a more Southwesterly direction. Cole moved to New York City to pursue his studies at NYU, so Chris Dammann has stepped in to fill the gap with his own unique bass stylings.
Time Out Chicago Description:This local quartet plays what could only be called “soundtrack music.†Its repertoire basically sounds like dramatic background music indicating, say, the advent of a gunfight or the main characters' arrival in an exotic small town. And they do it with bluegrass instrumentation; Tom McGettrick's banjo takes all the lead lines. This is an interesting idea that the group should take farther.