The idea of an album of marching-band music is pretty funny, but MarchFourth Marching Band doesn’t go for laughs in “Magnificent Beast,” as trombonists, trumpeters and sax players use their horns to build alluring melodies and throbbing beats. The group goes even brassier in “Rose City Strut,” as it’s joined by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s clarinetist, tenor saxophonist and tuba. The Preservation Hall band had come to Portland, Ore., home base for MarchFourth, for a joint concert last April; the New Orleans players agreed to improvise some solos for free if the recording could be made at the concert hall.

The horns push and pull, wail and oompah, share conversations and sometimes seem to have a difference of opinion, but always reunite in blissful harmony. The band was going for a dark, sultry mood, but an optimistic spirit is just as evident. The bah-BOMP-a-BOMP BOMP melody insinuates itself into the listener’s brain, while the pace is perfect for a stroll down the street. The song’s “Rose City” title calls out to a dancer named Rose who performs with the band, but it also functions as an homage to Portland’s nickname. Portland has many musical identities, but here, it sounds like the grooviest place in America.

NPR’s Song of the Day

PHOTO COURTESY ANDY BATTThe MarchFourth marching band from Portland, Ore. is comprised of over 30 individuals including brass and drum musicians, electric bassists and guitarists, stilt walkers and dancers. “We’re pretty free-spirited,” says bandleader and bassist John Averill, “and once people see us the whole uptight military-esque stigma of ‘marching band’ kind of flies out the window.”

By Yale Cohn.

All day yesterday I told people what an amazing show I had seen the previous evening at Gabe’s: the March Fourth Marching Band.

“What were they like, Yale?”

And that was the problem. I couldn’t say what they were “like” because they were so damn unique. I’d never seen anything “like” them ever before in all my years of going to concerts or seeing marching bands perform at football games or parades.

I had to describe them then for what they are, not what they were “like.”

What they are is a band so butch they make the Village People seem like N.W.A. by comparison, but with no tongues in cheeks at all – they mean it.

I think Salvador Dali is their manager.

They buy mustache wax by the drum.

H.R. Geiger designed their drum kits.

After seeing their show I am now sexually attracted to hats.

The space was not big enough for them and the sound and spectacle they brought with them and neither was my brain, it’s still throbbing. (Though that may also be the energy drink-based cocktails I had, lesson learned.)

I wanted to steal their poster from the door of the bar and crawl inside it in live there with the red-headed gal featured on it.

Their show was an Alejandro Jodorowsky film that jumped off the screen only with fewer exploding bullfrogs.

Some mad scientist somewhere took a marching band that died in a bus crash outside his castle, reassembled the bodies, laid them out on a platform that he pulled to the ceiling where it was zapped with a lightning bolt and brought them back to life as a monster, cackling all the time as he admired his creation, a monster of a sort that had never existed before.

A sweaty, beautiful, chaotic, organized, hyper-realized, super tight, fever dream of a monster that defies categorization and pumped out so much beat and rhythm that Gabe’s better call in a structural engineer to look at their roof sometime soon because it may have been blown clean the fuck off.

This was their first show in Iowa City and we all gushed and pleaded and threatened them that they better come back – or else – and I certainly hope they do.

Mostly for the sake of everybody who didn’t get to see them this time and are – rightfully – feeling bad about it given how much those of us that did have talked them up.

Would I go see them again myself?

I don’t know. They set the bar pretty insanely damn high themselves with their show on Monday and how could they possibly top it?

Then again, if anybody could, it would be them, wouldn’t it?

That’s a chance I’m willing to take.

If we’re lucky enough for them to come to our town again, so should you.

11/8/2010

The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival was hardly strictly bluegrass

It’s hard to say what was the best moment at the tenth annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival last weekend in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.  Maybe stretching out on a hill, looking up a trees and sky while Rosanne Cash sang songs from the list of important songs her late father, Johnny Cash, gave her.  Maybe Del McCoury’s high notes or the Carolina Chocolate Drops revitalizing vintge 1930s string band music (music researcher/Oberlin alum Rhiannon Giddens dropped ina phenomenal a cappella Scots Gaelic number she learned while studying in the UK).   Maybe “Guitar Town” from Steve Earle & the Dukes.   Or T Bone Burnett’s jam fest where the quicksilverish Elvis Costelo introduced a new song he descirbed as how rock and roll was done in the 1920s (it sounded like cabaret to me).

As for old timers like Doc Watson, Hazel Dickens (the voice of West Virginia coal mining coutnry) and EArl Scruggs, Ralph Stanley was going strong at 83, ornamenting his voczls far more than he did in bygone decades.   Like in his early days with his late brother Carter, his is a family band thanks to grandson Nathan (now moved from mandolin to guitar).   “He’s 18 and never been murdered — I mean married,” Ralph joked, prehaps referring to the violence of his southwestern Virginia culture that lies within his regional music.  The crowd danced happily has hapless Pretty Polly was tossed in to her grave.   Nathan, by the way, looked rather goth, but when you think about it, his grandfather’s repertoire (“O Death,” “Man of Constannt Sorrow”) is Appalachian gothic.

Surprises abounded.  Long-ago Blaster Phil Alvin joined younger brother Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women as “Marie” became Spanish language.   Dave and Christy McWilson convereted Doris Day’s 1956 white-bread “Que Sera Sera” to pure rock with ad libbed verses about Dave himself.   Whereas Day’s Eisenhower era orginal exuded optimism, Dave sees the song as fatalistic.

Allison Moorer and her older sister Shelby Lynne (nee Shelby Lynne Moorer) did their first public appearance as a duet act tentatively named Sissy.  (When each one’s autobiographical lyrics refer to Sissy, it’s the other she’s talking about.)   Besides their own songs (Allison’s Oscar-nominated “Soft Place to Fall”) they covered old Everly Brothers hits, opening and closing the set with a buoyant take on Kay Starr’s “Side by Side.”

Joan Baez largely retrenched to the trad ballads (“Lily of the West,” “House of the Rising Sun”)and apocalyptic Dylan material (“Farewell Angelina”) of her ’60s heyday.    Good move.

Richard Thompson stretched out “Demons in Her Dancing Shoes” to close with English country dance music.   It was an ironic ending given that the song’s setting (1960s crime-syndicate London) is such a far cry from the world of English country dance.

Of course, there were numerous references throughout the weekend to bluegrass’s stern o ld founder, the late Bill Monroe.   McCoury and Peter Rowan, of course, had been in his Bluegrass Boys.

Needless to say, this report can’t include all the great acts that played.   With six stages, you couldn’t be everywhere.   People say Patti Smith was phenomenal.

One final delight was Portland, Oregon’s Marchfourth Marching Band, which woke up Sunday morning’s crowd with, besides their music, an amazing trio of acrobat/comedians on stilts.

And thanks to investment banker/bluegrass lover Warren Hellman for once again creating and footing the bill for this incredible festival.

10/5/10

Musical Spectacle: MarchFourth Marching Band @ Club Congress, Friday 6/4

The MarchFourth Marching Band may just make you feel like a kid again John Averill, bass player and leader of the MarchFourth Marching Band, says the group’s joyous, freewheeling and funky performances are designed with both adults and children in mind.

I’ll go a step further: When I saw MarchFourth, it made this adult feel like a kid again.

Named for the date on which it formed, MarchFourth is a collective from Portland, Ore., that usually performs with almost two dozen members: horn players, a drum corps, dancers, fire breathers, clowns and stilt-walkers. The group plays a few covers, but its material is primarily original, drawing inspiration from jazz and big-band music, rock, funk, vaudeville, conventional marching bands, gypsy and Balkan music, a wide range of Latin, Caribbean and African styles, TV and film scores and the New Orleans second-line tradition. Averill was one of the five founding members who agreed to learn seven cover tunes for a Mardi Gras party on March 4, 2003. The band exploded from there, he says. “In the beginning, we never really planned out where we wanted to go. This thing has taken off with a life of its own. Leading this project is a lesson in learning how to not over-control the situation. It’s like a chariot with 18 horses, and it took off right out of the gate. The individual players and their influences dictate where we go with it.”

MarchFourth will return to Tucson to play this Friday, June 4, at Hotel Congress, as part of the event March Into Summer, presented by the Parasol Project. The festivities will also include an appearance by the local “pirate string band” The Missing Parts and a circus cabaret featuring jugglers, freaks, aerial performers, clowns and dancers.

Tucsonans were first introduced to MarchFourth one balmy Friday night last October. The band played an early-evening set at the annual cultural festival Tucson Meet Yourself in El Presidio Park. As that performance wound down, MarchFourth marched through the Pima County Courthouse arch, took a quick jog on Church Avenue to Congress Street, then headed east, playing the entire time—with a growing crowd joyfully following behind. At a few street corners, MarchFourth took a break from marching to play on the sidewalk, blasting funky brass and drums through the Tucson night. At a couple of stops, local horn players spontaneously jumped in to jam with the group. When the band arrived at the Hotel Congress, it took a quick break to set up on the outdoor stage and played another complete set under the stars, while the dancers and stilt-walkers mixed, mingled and danced with the audience.

MarchFourth can’t stage impromptu parades in every city. The members have to research local ordinances and regulations beforehand, Averill says. “In some places, you can get fined for performing on a city street without a license. In some places, they’ll fine you $500. Per person.” Indeed, every MarchFourth performance is different. “To a certain extent, we always want to keep that spontaneity as a very important ingredient to the whole thing. A lot of our material is arranged in ways to allow for that. A lot of the songs have open-ended arrangements, and it depends on who’s soloing or the rest of the chemistry that dictates how a show will be. Sometimes that means random performers come up to us on the street to play as well.” Averill says some of the current MarchFourth players actually were drawn into the group after joining in during street performances. Nowadays, the extended roster for MarchFourth includes about 35 musicians and performers, although only about 20 travel together for each tour, he says. “Some of them have other commitments. Some are on the first-call list; some are considered substitutes. The money can only spread so far. We’re not making really great money, but I’d rather pay decent money to 20 people for a tour than take 30-plus and have them not making hardly anything.” Averill, 42, says an average MarchFourth tour will include a maximum of five or six horn players, eight drummers and four to six dancers and/or stilt-walkers. And, of course, there’s Averill on bass, trailing a cart with a battery-powered amplifier.

The members come from a variety of musical backgrounds, Averill says. “The horns have more of the formal training, and some of the drummers have experience in school band or marching band. I didn’t personally have marching band in my background. I’m more of a rock guy, originally. But now, I can write music for a mini-orchestra, and have nine different drum parts if I want. “And I don’t take it for granted, either. I feel really grateful that the band is still together and gets along as well as it does. I mean, we’ve had our growing pains and challenging moments, but compared to what I hear about other ‘alternative marching bands’ out there, we are a pretty well-adjusted group.” MarchFourth has recorded and released three independent albums, the most recent being Rise Up. To the group’s credit, the music is excellent on disc, too. “That’s nice to hear, because that aspect is important to me. We don’t just want it to be about the spectacle. We want it to sound like a real band that makes real music that moves you and records CDs that preserve that experience,” Averill says. Most of the band’s members also are full- or part-time artists, designers and craftspeople, who design and fabricate every piece of hardware used, from the stilts to the drum harnesses. And each individual member creates his or her unique uniform. “Everybody can do whatever they want in terms of how they look, for better or worse. Some of us can use a little more fashion sense. Some of the members look really good, and some people roll out of bed, put on a hat and call it good.” -Gene Armstrong

June 2, 2010

The March Fourth Marching Band stormed the streets of Salmon Arm Thursday as part of Roots and Blues outreach festivities.

Click to see the slide show >>

Pomp and Circumstance
MarchFourth is not your nerdy high school marching band

If you see a horde of musicians dressed like pirates who raided a band uniform store flood out of a giant touring coach, followed by fire spinners on stilts and sequined dancing girls, you’re probably about to witness the concert extravaganza that is the MarchFourth Marching Band. On Monday, June 7, the band will stage a huge performance at the El Rey Theater. Adults and children alike have the chance to be wowed by the music and spectacle this band is known for.

MarchFourth, the group’s website proudly touts, is a date, a command and a band. It was formed by a mess of artists and musicians in Portland, Ore., on March 4, 2003. M4, as the band is known to fans, was originally supposed to play one Mardi Gras party, but the group had so much positive feedback it just kept going. First comprised of 15 musicians, M4 now has 23 official instrument wielders: 13 on horns and sax, nine drummers, and an electric bassist. M4 also includes a posse of other performers—“beauties”—who are part of every show. Currently there are 10 in this circus-style entourage who dance, walk on stilts, hula hoop and more. Sometimes they play venues wherein musicians spill off stage and the dancers mix with the crowd, erasing the line between band members and audience.

Not everyone tours at once, however. “The roster on the website is much like a sports team roster, where it shows the entirety of the band as opposed to who may be playing any given night,” explains John Averill, band leader and bass player. Averill says the band has core members at every show and others who sub in and out, adding that many of M4’s original members now have families and are unable to tour as much. “Lately, as we’ve been streamlining our touring band—we have been working with five to six drummers and eight to nine horns. It actually sounds tighter with a ‘smaller’ lineup.”

M4 doesn’t have much in common with a traditional marching band. The musicians write their own material, record albums and rarely march—although they can if needed, Averill assures. From renovating the inside of the touring bus (which M4 owns), to creating instrument harnesses out of old bike parts, the group is pretty DIY. Some of the members are also costume or clothing designers, and most piece together their own “uniforms.” Averill credits this to the vibe of their city. “I think we’re a product of the Portland artistic community at large, which has the sensibility that it makes more sense to recycle and create from that.”

The music is a mash-up of big band, jazz, ska, Eastern European folk and other styles. Some songs have a distinct Latin rhythm; some sound like ’60s spy themes. It seems whatever the eclectic group likes gets thrown into the mix, as any member can write music for the band. M4’s size and controlled musical chaos lends itself to one of the band’s goals, which is to get the audience worked up and dancing. Averill likens M4 to other large bands with high-level showmanship, like Gogol Bordello. “Musically, we borrow from many styles and genres, which is a form of recycling,” he says. “In terms of vibe, we’re all about seizing the moment, and no two shows are ever exactly alike. We establish a connection with the audience and see where it goes from there.”

Read the rest of the feature article at Alibi.com>>

6/3/2010

Making whatever music you can
MarchFourth Marching Band is manically fun
By David Accomazzo

Start with a gritty New Orleans street-band influence — all fun, all music, all party. Throw in more musical influences than you can count, from Eastern European gypsy grass to George Clinton funk to Bugs Bunny cartoons, and you’re getting close. Add a sizable percussion section, fire breathers, jugglers, dancers, a healthy appreciation for marching band costumes and a sense of humor, and you begin to approach what MarchFourth Marching Band is all about.

It’s hard to describe MarchFourth Marching Band without seeing them live. (As band leader and bass player John Averill says, “We’re actually just kind of a marching band in disguise.”) The band’s latest album, the 2009 release Rise Up, sounds like a (stationary) big band with a drum corps, but the album’s tracks are so eclectic it’s hard to nail the sound into one particular genre. Averill, who spent most of the interview with Boulder Weekly following a fourfoot garter snake around Topanga Canyon, Calif., finds labeling the band’s music just as hard as the rest of us.

“Our sound has really evolved [since the band’s inception in 2003],” Averill says. “I think the initial ingredients that we had when we started were like Rebirth Brass Band, Fela Kuti, and definitely samba, and Eastern European gypsy-grass. Those were sort of the initial ingredients that we started with, then we started adding a lot more jazz and funk and rock since then. A lot of our newer material is pretty hard-hitting in a big dancey, funk-rock mode.”

It starts to make sense as you listen to the album.

The band has more than 40 people contributing when back home in Portland, Ore. — about 20 came along for the tour — and Averill says about 12 people write the band’s songs. That’s a lot of influences, especially considering how the band picked up many of the horn players after gigs.

“Most of the songs are written by the horn players.

And some of them have some really interesting elements that they’re putting together in these songs.

You go from some New Orleans funky thing to some almost math rock kind of thing to this gypsy breakdown. We have this one song that’s this sort of drum and bass with a cowboy sort of gallop. It’s all over the place,” Averill says.

Managing more than 20 people can no doubt be frustrating and challenging at times, but Averill manages to keep a cool head. It helps that the band is diva-free.

“I just try to guide where I think the project needs to go at any given moment,” Averill says. “It’s like a chariot being pulled by 20 horses or something. If the horses decide they want to go this way, all you can do is try to steer it.”

Rise Up’s opening track, “Ninth Ward Calling,” is straight New Orleans party funk — percussive hand clapping, multi-layered cascading horns, and the rough melodic chanting you get when instrumentalists try to sing, all tied together by creative horn fills. The “Sing, Sing, Sing”-inspired drums of “Dynomite” are so infectious they turn casual listeners into amateur tabletop drummers. “Nightmarika” sounds like the bastard offspring of the West Side Story “I like to live in America” riff and the harmonic minor scale. “Freestyle for Miles” shoots steroids into some classic Miles Davis tunes and blasts them out of the park, and “Powerhouse” is a loving cover of the instantly recognizable theme of every accident-prone factory ever to appear in a Looney Tunes cartoon. It’s a wild album, and it’s insanely fun to listen to.

6/3/2010

Read the whole article at Boulderweekly.com>>

The MarchFourth Marching Band may just make you feel like a kid again

John Averill, bass player and leader of the MarchFourth Marching Band, says the group’s joyous, freewheeling and funky performances are designed with both adults and children in mind.

I’ll go a step further: When I saw MarchFourth, it made this adult feel like a kid again.

Named for the date on which it formed, MarchFourth is a collective from Portland, Ore., that usually performs with almost two dozen members: horn players, a drum corps, dancers, fire breathers, clowns and stilt-walkers. The group plays a few covers, but its material is primarily original, drawing inspiration from jazz and big-band music, rock, funk, vaudeville, conventional marching bands, gypsy and Balkan music, a wide range of Latin, Caribbean and African styles, TV and film scores and the New Orleans second-line tradition.

Averill was one of the five founding members who agreed to learn seven cover tunes for a Mardi Gras party on March 4, 2003. The band exploded from there, he says. “In the beginning, we never really planned out where we wanted to go. This thing has taken off with a life of its own. Leading this project is a lesson in learning how to not over-control the situation. It’s like a chariot with 18 horses, and it took off right out of the gate. The individual players and their influences dictate where we go with it.”

6/2/2010

Read the rest of the blog here>>

To say that March Fourth Marching Band is eclectic is an understatement. Although the mobile group consists of the usual marching band staples, including a 12-piece horn section and a 10-piece drum and percussion set, everything else about the group screams circus. Fire-eaters, stilt walkers, hula-hoop dancers and puppeteers are just a few of the elements that make March Fourth an act to remember.
The Portland natives who make up March Fourth performed Wednesday at Necropolis, a club in Old Sacramento.
Necropolis is small, so the performers and musicians mingled with guests at the bar while their equipment was set up. The show started a little late because of trouble with the tour bus — a 1984 MCI Coach purchased on eBay — but once it began, things got lively.
Unfortunately, because Necropolis’ ceilings are relatively low and the venue is downstairs, there were no stilt walkers, fire eaters or puppeteers. But that had no effect on the spirit of the performers or the energy of the crowd.
When the black lights came on, the costumes of the group really came to life. The glow from the black-and-white color combinations of the marching band’s jackets, vests and hats lit up the room. And the white flags of the flag twirlers and the neon-pink hoops of the hula hoop dancer appeared particularly psychedelic.
The intimate venue allowed dancers to pull guests onto the dance floor to boogey with them. Everyone was encouraged to jump out of their seats and cut a rug.
“I love their junkie, artistic, thrown-together, sort of hodgepodge sound,” said Stephanie Bird. “I actually saw them at Burning Man and when I heard that they were playing here in Sacramento, I just had to go see them again. They really are entertainment for all your senses.”
The crowd at the venue ranged from toddlers to older gentlemen. Regardless of age, the antics of the dancers and the energy of March Fourth Marching Band kept a smile on everybody’s face, even without the more extreme elements of their act.
“The music is all about having fun,” stilt walker Sid Simpatico said. “That’s the most important thing.”
(4/1/2010)