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I first got the chance to play with Melvin Sparks when my good pal Paul Wolstencroft called me on a Thursday to see if I could headline a big festival with them the next day. I of course said yes and then proceeded directly to the kit in my basement to get my boogaloo in order. Melvin and I got along swimmingly, and happily I’m now the full time drummer in his band. There are two Melvin Sparks Band recordings here: 1) Funky Good Time, which features Paul W on organ and Mike Gordon from Phish on bass (there are also some videos of it on the left and more on Youtube – thanks for whipping out your camera Matt Fisken!), and 2) a whole buncha other jams all recorded live at the Blue Note in New York with good ‘ol Eliot Krimsky holding down the keyboard duties on his Nord.
Speaking of Eliot, Renegade Sounds was a project that he and I worked on for a couple of years. We spent months at Craig Welsch's Echobass Studio producing a CD, which came out incredibly, and then never did anything with it. "Shock and Awe Dub" is probably my favorite; I actually snipped a piece of it on the beginning of "Spy Drone" here. It starts with this drum thing. It's all me overdubbed over myself on drumset, congas, and talking drum, and then Rankin' just smashed it with the space echo pedal. On "Spy Drone" I duct taped bells to the front bass drum head and slung them over the ride cymbal to create that endless Santa-on-mushrooms vibe. Eliot played all the other parts. Love the ending... The recordings here are all about 5 years old. I’m a way better drummer than I was then, but I still love the tunes and what we did with them.
Buru Style is my personal pet-project du jour. It’s for the most part a collective that always features Miles Turner on bass and me on kit with any number of other great musicians, and I write and/or arrange all of the music. When we first got it going, it was really indebted to dub and nyabingi, particularly the type of stuff Cedric IM Brooks recorded. (A little side note, I run Cedric’s myspace for him, check it out at http://www.myspace.com/cedricimbrooks). But as time has gone on it’s really branched out and we’ve even learned all the classic riddims and backed a few vocalists (Dion Knibb, Ras Coley, and Toussaint Yeshua). The recordings here feature a few different versions of the group. A couple tracks up that feature my dear friend Toussaint Yeshua/Liberator on vocals. The instrumentalists in this version of the group are all Wesleyan people who have really been killing it as of late (check out that horn section! And thank you Dave Malloy for the recording). The other tracks are live recordings from the older half-Boston version. Jared Sims takes a stankingly nasty bari solo on 400 Years! If you hear thumping drums and meditative bass wafting from a back yard or living room in Middletown, you can pretty much count on it being Buru Style
For a while there Toussaint and The China Band was the group I worked with most. We toured internationally, shared love, hate and hangovers, ate ribs in Honduras and sipped tequila at Guantanimo Bay (no, I'm actually not kidding about that). I think "Ooh Yeah" is one of the better recordings of my drumming. We actually played mostly reggae, but this tune just sort of happened on stage one night. I think I managed to channel a little Sunday morning spirit here. There’s more about us at myspace.com/toussaintandthechinaband.
West Cambridge All Stars is Miles Turner’s massive group of all Wesleyan folk. I take a nice big drum solo on the included MT original “Chicken for Life.†Nate Ash-Morgan’s Yak-Stars is also a Wesleyan group. Nate arranged a bunch of music influenced by his trip to Ghana for us. I play snare on the Ghanaian Marching Band piece and drumset on Alhaji, a song on which I take a fairly massive drum solo.
I’ve been in Dead Cat Bounce a whopping ten years! The recordings here are from our 2005 album “Home Speaks to the Wandering†and an unreleased album we recorded in the middle of the night in St. Louis in 2004. Matt Steckler, the group’s leader and the composer of all the music, does such a great job with the tunes; they’re inside and outside, serious and quirky, challenging yet fun to listen to: all the things music should be. The other full-timers in the group are all saxophonists: Matt, Charlie Kohlhase, Drew Sayers, and Jared Sims, each a seriously bad cat.
Carl Testa’s trio is another really great group in which I have the good fortune to take part. The tracks here are all from the soon to be released album “Uncertainty†which we recorded over two days at Firehouse 12 studios in New Haven, CT. Carl is has a brilliant ear for texture—I think the “A Little While†excerpt really speaks to that—and he does some great SuperCollider work on these tracks too. It’s pretty different stuff for me, and that’s great. You’d never guess by looking at this site, but at first I only wanted to play like Rashied Ali; I thought the free way was the only way! The tenorman is Jim Antonucci, another fine Southern CT Italian Yankee fan.
At Wesleyan I’ve been granted the distinct honor of leading the Wesleyan Steel Band for the past several years. I’m proud to say I’ve turned it from a ten person ensemble to a thirty person unit with chops and an attitude! Included here is the band performing my arrangement of the Sean Paul track We’ll Be Burning as well as Beethoven’s hit single Adagio Cantabile. Seriously though, the Beethoven piece represents some very hard work on the students’ part, as well as the first time I’ve ever conducted a group (and I’m delighted to say that I did it with a drumstick).
I was never a full member of the B3 Kings, but I subbed in quite often, and these tracks, which feature Paul Wolstencroft (organ), Johnny Trama (guitar), Timo Shanko (Tenor) and Sam Kinnenger (Alto) really have a great vibe.
Finally, back in the late 90s many of us were sure that The Miracle Orchestra was the band that was going to make us famous. Geoff Scott and I founded it together right out of high school, with the help of the ever able bassist Garrett Sayers. At first we had Colin Fisher and Jeremy Udden on trumpet and sax and Brian Sayers on percussion too, but within a year or so we were a quartet rounded out by Jared Sims on saxophones and electronics. There’s a hodge podge of MO here: Call it Nine and Bad Haircut are from the early years (recorded live at a basement party in Allston), and The Secret Life of Juan Valdez and Stonehendge are from our last tour, recorded live in Boulder, Colorado in 2001 (and released on the Lauan Records compilation “3 setsâ€). Though I left the group with a bitter taste, I’ve got to say that I love listening to these recordings. “Bad Haircut†has the indefatigable energy of 19 year old musicians and it sounds great too, and the two tracks from 2001 are so avant-garde and steeped in the drum n’ bass we were listening to that they make me proud as hell! I’ve come a LONG way on drums since then, but that stuff aint bad!
Haven't heard enough? Here's where there's more about me! http://www.myspace.com/burustyle
http://www.myspace.com/miracleorchestra
http://www.myspace.com/themelvinsparksband
http://www.deadcatbounce.org
http://www.carltesta.com
And I write for:
http://www.newhavenadvocate.com
http://www.hartfordadvocate.com
http://www.fairfieldweekly.com
http://www.jazz.com
and I'll have pieces coming out soon in:
Wax Poetics and Modern Drummer!
And, of course, I'm also on Facebook!