As winter traffic from the Bay Area increases, thankfully so do performances from Big City musicians. Artists of genres from bluegrass to hip hop, and everything in between, perform to sold-out crowds throughout the Tahoe/Truckee winter. Pay close attention and you may be able to party with many acts for free.
Two such upcoming bands worth mentioning are Spaceheater’s Blast Furnace, and the Shotgun Wedding Quintet. While many here are familiar with Shotgun, this is Spaceheater’s Tahoe debut. These two groups are original and separate, yet, they have tight connections, sharing band members, friends, etc. This is most likely due to each band’s membership in the Bay Area’s Jazz Mafia – a group of musicians, and lyricists sharing a passion for delivering fresh sounds, influenced by their community, to community members, and abroad.
Shotgun, renowned for its jazz-influenced, funky live hip-hop sound, is known to mix the wah-wah of Adam Theis’ trombone over a deep beat from Patrick ‘PdubL’ Korte, overlaid with rapid lyrics from Dublin, the vocal freestyler. Spaceheater emanates a similar premise, but gives a more Latin-fueled version, capable of playing everything from salsa to head-thumping mixing and scratching.
Spaceheater consists of Evan Francis on the saxophone, clarinet and flute, drums by PdubL, Josh Hari on the bass, and Garret Smith on the trombone, with Scott Thompson, Matt Lucas, and friends.
‘The project was conceived in 2003, when myself and producer Bill Mitsakos (a.k.a. Vladimir Computin) were partying in the S.F. Mission District,’ Evan said, ‘ we achieved a point of intoxication that led us to make a piece in which I layered three saxophone parts over a strange, glitchy, beat of his.’
After listening to the recording the next morning, they concluded they were onto something. Evan began trekking to apartments, in the Lower Haight, where he would blend his saxophone, flute, and clarinet instrumentation with Mitsakos beats. They recorded an album titled, ‘The Record,’ released in 2006, on Los Angeles’ Alpha Pup Records and San Francisco’s Daly City Records.
‘It was a surprise success, hitting the iTunes Top 20 in the genre of electronic albums, hitting number one on a bunch of college radio charts,’ Evan said.
After Mitsakos moved to New Zealand pursuing a career abroad Evan attempted performing the music solo with limited success. As Evan was thinking his dream child had passed on, PdubL approached him with the idea to attempt his compositions with a live band. Initially reluctant, Evan succumbed when the booking agent for the historic San Francisco strip club, The Condor, contacted Spaceheater to perform a summer’s worth of shows.
‘I agreed, called (PdubL), and a few other of my favorite musicians, and started arranging the formerly electronic music for a live band. This is how ‘Spaceheater’s Blast Furnace’ was born, which is what we call this phase of the band,’ Evan said.
These musicians inspired Evan to continue writing upwards of 20 compositions for the band.
‘We’ve played all over the Bay area, clubs, festivals, dive bars, museums, and garages,’ Evan said, ‘and The Condor has turned back into a strip club.’
As Jazz Mafia all members of both bands are involved in outside projects, including Evan. He occasionally performs with a band, Rumbache, who plays Timba, a form of modern Cuban salsa. Learning from the rhythm of that music, involving drums and congas complementing the melody and harmony of other pieces of the band, Evan applies it to musical composition in other realms.
‘I use the salsa type of design for arranging music; a musical intro, a slow moving, romantic melody that develops into a jam section that goes through crazy changes to get more hyped up,’ he said, ‘then to exit, make a reference to where we started, the musical intro idea.’
Infusing that structure with his love for hip-hop and rhythm & blues, Evan and Spaceheater have a spicy, original, booty-shaking sound.
‘We use this system but the slow romantic melody part can be replaced with an x-factor, a weird hip-hop vamp, or an ornate melody with r & b type chord changes and rhythms,’ Evan said, ‘and the ‘jam section’ has to grow organically out of that idea, challenging from a composing point of view, so our music mixes genres by design rather than by ornamentation.’
The variety in styles and band members’ backgrounds is part of the composition process, and a testament to being a musician and a band.
‘As long as people express themselves honestly; putting their music out into the world, great things will continue to happen. Music is a more basic ingredient to human experience than a lot of us realize,’ Evan said.
Diversity is a staple of the Jazz Mafia and indeed of the entire Bay Area. According to Shotgun member Dublin it’s ‘simple, (it’s) the diversity of the Bay Area, you can’t roam around the Bay freely and not be influenced by other people and genres.’
Evan states it’s ‘a great gift, being able to work with people constantly to make their musical ideas come to life.’
Bringing his ideas to life with Shotgun, Dublin believes he brings a conceptual viewpoint to the group.
‘The music is always strong, I just try to bring the pictures the music creates to life with the lyrics,’ Dublin said. ‘The music makes someone feel a certain way, I try to pinpoint that feeling with the rapping, or singing, or grunting, or whatever.’
Composed of Dublin, Patrick ‘PdubL’ Korte, Joe Cohen, Aspect McCarthy and Adam Theis, some Shotgun Wedding Quintet members were influential in the formation of the Jazz Mafia.
According to Dublin the Jazz Mafia is ‘just a collaborative umbrella that a bunch of musicians can stand under together.’
Meanwhile, Spaceheater and Shotgun Wedding are leaving the umbrella to roam the mountains from February 19 to 22.
‘We both strike a balance between the cerebral and getting people to dance a lot,’ Dublin said. But ‘there is no rapper in Spaceheater, they are less obnoxious.’
Dublin has a message for aspiring muscians: ‘Young people need to see that all those years their parents force them to practice can come to good use when you make a living playing music with your friends.’
As for Evan he hopes to hype the audience, get everybody moving.
‘I love when people freak out to our music,’ Evan said.
~ For info on the shows, contact Moody’s at 530-587-8688. For info on the bands, visit shotgunweddingquintet.com or myspace.com/spaceheater. Discuss the article with the author. Email grantb@moonshineink.com.
