That Hoo Doo that you do

This past weekend merits a blog entry because it ties into almost every other entry I made in the last year or so, and it is one of those "I would be remiss" situations where I just have to throw some props to a few folks.

Now don't get me wrong. I want anyone who happens on this blog to go see Sharp Circle Band as frequently as you can. I'm honored that I get to be on the same stage with Scott, Aaron, Cory, Jason, Kevin, Tim and Rachel and it's an amazing feeling to sink our collective teeth into a pounding groove and ride it out while the crowd dances in front of us. I love seeing the audience having as much fun as I am as we play our sets.

But this entry is going to be about another local band, and in particular two musicians I've never played with but who have both enomously impacted my life and musical career.

In my last blog entry I referenced these two musicians who amazed my fellow Conservatory students and I with their incredible talent 24 years ago. Then this past weekend I was at a wedding and got to be amazed all over again by the same two guys.

The Hoo Doo Soul Band has been around since 1995. When it comes to covers of groove-oriented music--R&B, Funk and Soul--they are literally the top shelf. This is a band that draws musicians to its weekly, Sunday night gigs at Rumba Cafe; people like me in other regularly gigging bands come to watch the big dogs lay it down. If you love and play this style of music, any Hoo Doo gig is a master-class in how it's done. Getting to sub for Hoo Doo is any local musician's dream--even if laced with a small amount of terror that you might not be up to the task.

If you love horn bands with serious chops, Hoo Doo is for you; Chris Young, Kris Keith, Kevin O'Neill and Phil Clark are all monstrous, sick players. If you love silky, soulful, blues-drenched vocals, Hoo Doo is for you; Bobby Stewart, Kevin Oliver and Phil Clark and occasionally Kris cover a huge range of territory. If you want to hear the tightest rhythm section on earth, Hoo Doo is definitely for you; Tony McClung, Jeff Ciampa, Kevin Oliver, John Boerstler, Dave DeWitt and Mark Henderson are a giant, throbbing machine. And in fact, given that they do play every single Sunday at Rumba and many more private parties and weddings, you stand a better than average change of hearing at least one sub for the people I just mentioned, and I guarantee you'll still be blown away.

Speaking as a player in a very similar-genre band that does bar gigs, weddings and private parties, Hoo Doo is the band we all want to have. There are always times during a gig where we hit some really ultra-funky groove and I kind of wish we didn't have to move onto the next portion for awhile, and that's one of the hallmarks of a Hoo Doo show. An hour of a Sharp Circle show will go by and you'll hear twelve to fifteen songs. In an hour of Hoo Doo you might hear more like eight far longer versions of familiar covers (and some not-so-familiar), after which you feel like you've run a marathon and won the lottery all at the same time. It's inspiring. All of my fellow SCB players leave from seeing Hoo Doo wanting to add at least half of the set we just heard into our own set lists. Honestly, it's damn hard not to try to copy them in total, but in the end I always come away feeling glad that Sharp Circle band does what it does, differently enough from Hoo Doo, but also refreshed in my desire to practice my guitar and be the best musician I can be.

And here's the thing: Kevin Oliver and Jeff Ciampa have been doing that for me my entire adult life.

In the summer of 1987 I was attending The Recording Workshop ("TRW") in Chillicothe, Ohio as part of my music degree at Capital University. Several evenings a week we would be assigned as recording engineers for various regional bands who got to enjoy a free demo in return for letting students do the work. One hot July night, TRW teacher Marty Vian brought down the other members of his new band, Zero One, to record a demo of one of Marty's original songs called "Body Speak." I already knew drummer Peter Retzlaff from Capital, but bassist Ciampa and guitarist Oliver were new to me. I remember Jeff was upset because Marty's song called for thump/pop style bass and Jeff had meant to bring his fretted bass to the date, but had accidentally grabbed his mostly-identical fretless bass instead. My TRW team members were some of my best friends from Capital, including bassists Martin Pipho and Mark Taylor, and they both felt his pain, being fairly sure the tune wouldn't work with a fretless bass.

It worked just fine. In fact, it was a little bit life-changing.

Jeff's sound is, in a word, huge. He certainly borrows elements of Jaco's style, but thankfully eschewed that "inverse smile" on a graphic-EQ that makes a bass's tone all midrange, instead preferring a more even EQ curve with the occasional addition of an octave-pedal that almost shakes fillings loose. What makes Jeff's signature sound though is his feel. Now having moved from the Pedulla basses I first heard him use to the far more ubiquitous Fender Jazz Bass, and having been through several different amp rigs over the years, he always sounds like him when you hear him. The musical term is "pocket," and Jeff is a giant, walking pocket, effortlessly gliding between root tones and harmony lines that seem like they always should have been in the song you're hearing, even though you know they're not.

If Jeff is pocket embodied, Kevin Oliver is funk on a stick. A veteran of George Clinton's P-Funk All-Stars, Kevin was steeped in groove. His style is as instantly discernible as Jeff's is, a simultaneous blending of guitar playing and drumming. His time is unwavering--not even the notoriously time-trickster drummer Dave Weckl could trip him up at a local drum clinic some years back.

The minute I heard Kevin play, it fundamentally altered how I thought about the guitar. My style today is unquestionably and unabashedly a product of every guitarist I loved as a kid, then reined into a central focal point via the lessons I learned from watching Kevin. So too are my sense of harmony and my ideas about songwriting profoundly affected by Jeff Ciampa.

Right after that TRW session in July of '87, we became Zero One devotees, flocking to every show they did in town. Their sets were a blend of Jeff's originals, a couple of Marty's originals, Beatles covers and funk covers. Their 1991 release, "Darwin's Finch vs. The Flying Saucers" was amazing--Jeff & Kevin's funk-slam, tight harmonies, big 80's drum sounds, and thoughtful and often soul-searching lyrics.

Jeff's obvious Beatles influence became even more clear in his writing for his next project with Kevin (and also Hoo Doo drummer Tony McClung), Vinyl. Vinyl was certainly a stripped-down band compared to Zero One, but twice as muscular. Their first eponymous CD and the follow up a few years later (My Imagined Life With Alfred Moore) when the band had been renamed "OmniPop" are brilliant forays into songwriting that is steeped in every style of music I love but is clearly presented as pop. There's also something very rewarding about hearing Jeff's lyrics on some of the songs on My Secret Life... answer questions posed a decade earlier on Darwin's Finch... . The clear lesson is that maturing doesn't stop existential questioning, but that doesn't mean it doesn't provide us with answers we've always wanted.

And some answers I've always wanted were provided at Jason & Michelle's fantastic wedding reception thanks to Jeff, Kevin and all of the Hoo Doo Soul Band: one's life in music is a constant evolutionary process and, in truest Zen fashion, the journey is everything. Great musicians and great music will continue to inspire me until the day I die, and every time I'm reminded of that is one hell of a happy day.