Spectrum 40 Tour East Coast USA

Hey Everybody: I have enclosed the dates for this Spectrum 40 tour featuring Dean Brown, Gary Husband and Ric Fierabracci. Please spread the word as it would be good to build on what we have begun in September of 2013 as this is short foray a "prep" for the full USA tour set for Spring, 2015 where we will finally have that live cd released. Thanks in advance for your support and please stop by and say hello if you make one of the shows where we are performing in your city.

Boomer

The Dates are:
Aug 29 Londonderry N.H. Tupelo Music Hall
Aug 30 Albany NY The Egg
Aug 31 Buffalo NY The Tralf Musichall
Sept 2 through 7 The Blue Note New York City
Sept 10 Jim Thorpe, PA Mauchunk Opera House
Sept 11 Washington DC Howard theatre
Sept 12 Cambridge Mass Regatta Bar

Thanks for the Tour Dates, Boomer...I will try my best to come out and support the music.

I saw you and the band at The Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, PA (Where the 1958 film "The Blob" was filmed) in Jan. 2013.

Maybe if you come closer to the Philadelphia area next time, I will have a better chance of making the show.
Jim Thorpe, PA is almost a 2 hour ride to and from the venue for me, plus it is a weeknight....
but I will try my best to see if I can swing it.

Looking forward to the live CD, is it a completely new CD or are you referring to "Compass Point"?
It would be cool if you could include live photos in the CD art, I love "Live" albums but I hate it when no
live photos are included in the artwork, it just makes the package way cooler and gives you something to look at while you are listening.

Thanks again!!

Drumman:
The cd is not the Compass Point material but a book made up of material from Gary, Ric, Dean and myself. It's the music that we played on the past tour done in September 2013.

Boomer

More than just drums, Cobham brings a fully rounded powerhouse concert

By Greg Haymes

ALBANY — Back in the late ’60s and early ’70s, Billy Cobham established himself as one of the prime architects of the jazz-rock fusion sound as the drummer with such bands as Dreams (featuring the Brecker Brothers), Miles Davis (on his classic 1970 “A Tribute to Jack Johnson” album) and the high-flying Mahavishnu Orchestra. Melding jazz sensibilities and rock aggression, Cobham struck the perfect balance.

Now 70 years old, Cobham is still at it, and he can scorch most drummers half his age. In concert in front of a nearly packed house at The Egg’s Swyer Theatre on Saturday night, he deftly walked the tightrope between explosive power and exacting precision.


He was leading his Spectrum 40 Band, celebrating the 40th anniversary of “Spectrum,” his groundbreaking 1973 solo album debut. (Yes, it’s now really the 41st anniversary of the album, but as The Egg’s director Peter Lesser explained during his introduction, “We’ve been trying to get him here for more than a year.”) But Cobham wasn’t content to merely throw together a “tribute band” for a routine run through “Spectrum” in its entirity. Oh no. In fact, he and the band were nearly a half hour into their show before they launched into their first selection from “Spectrum,” a muscular, funky strut through “Stratus,” which showcased the thrumming bass pulse of Ric Fierabracci, the angular, glitch ‘n’ pop attack of keyboardist Gary Husband and the seismic guitar freak-out of Dean Brown.

More selections from “Spectrum” were to come – the dazzling one-two punch of the swinging “Quadrant 4″ paired with the funk of the album’s title track closed out the set in dizzying fashion, and the final blues-strutting encore of “Red Baron” left the crowd breathless – but the concert wasn’t really about celebrating “Spectrum” the album as much as it was about paying homage to the spirit of “Spectrum.”

Of course, it was Cobham’s drum mastery that drew the crowd, and he didn’t disappoint. He dropped a number of short but mesmerizing drum solos throughout the night – often as interludes tying songs together – and his big, eight-minute solo, the first half of which he played with two sticks in each hand (!), was perfectly jaw-dropping.

But as he pointed out, the band is a collaborative effort, and Cobham allowed each of his bandmates a chance to showcase their compositional skills, as well as their exquisite musical technique. In fact, it was was Fierabracci’s roiling “Sphere of Influence” that set the mood as the opening number, while Husband’s “If Animals Had Guns, Too” flexed the perfect combination of muscle and speed, and Brown’s fuguing “Two Numbers” was a genuine highlight of the night.

Jazz-rock fusion hasn’t had much mainstream exposure in recent years, and it almost seems like some sort of historical relic. But don’t tell that to Billy Cobham. He’s still at the top of his game. And don’t tell that to Saturday night’s crowd, either…

Greg Haymes is a frequent contributor to the Times Union.

***
Concert review
Billy Cobham’s Spectrum 40 Band
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: The Egg’s Swyer Theatre, Empire State Plaza, Albany
Length: 90 minutes; no opening act; no intermission
Highlights: “Stratus,” the interwoven “Two Numbers” and the undeniably swinging “Quadrant 4″
The crowd: Packed with enthusiastic fans and only a few scattered empty seats




Peace, TED

Any chance of a Space date
in Evanston, again????

Can I help?

And here's another great review !!



Review: Cobham shows again fusion still lives
Monday, September 1, 2014
By Michael Hochanadel



ALBANY — Want the fountain of youth? Ask Billy Cobham.

Like fellow drummer Roy Haynes (even older, nearing 90) 70-year-old Billy Cobham plays up a storm. On Saturday at The Egg’s smaller Swyer Theatre, Cobham revisited his 40-year old “Spectrum” album with a trio well-matched to his power and precision.

By the time Cobham recorded “Spectrum” to launch a prolific solo career, he’d already co-invented fusion with Miles Davis and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. But “Spectrum” introduced Cobham as composer.

While he showcased “Spectrum” tunes on Saturday, he also spotlighted songs by bandmembers Gary Husband (keys) and Dean Brown (guitar). But it was his show all the way, and not just when he soloed with two sticks in each hand late in his 90-minute set, intro’ed tunes or crafted segues between songs from one beat to another.

He launched “Sphere of Influence” with a roar that subsided (some) into riff waves that peaked with Brown’s hyperactive (physically and musically) arpeggio blasts before sauntering back to the head. “Radioactive,” a breezy, complex-time tune, featured Husband using busy electronics to reshape notes and tones before Brown took his restless shot at the melody and Cobham grabbed and ran with it, then summoned everybody back to the tune’s original stutter-step launching pad.

Cobham held the spotlight to introduce the slower, sweeter “Heather,” a lovely, relatively sparse ballad whose plainspoken lyricism felt like a cold one after the hard work of listening through the two earlier riff-storms, or like a Japanese ink-painting of a classic landscape after car chases through big cities. However, Cobham couldn’t resist going up-tempo. As the band soothed, adagio, he played allegro, then presto, but let us down easy at the end.

“Stratus” went faster, high-octane funk spiced by Husband at his electro-noisiest and Brown even noisier, but again, Cobham took over by going double-time at the recap. Brown then led in his own “Two Numbers,” playing face to face with Husband while Cobham pushed hard, taking over the vamp at the end before tossing things back to Husband and Brown.

Some props here to bassist Ric Fierobracci who got little solo time but had the band’s back all the way. He linked with Cobham’s (double, big) kick-drum thuds, lending tone to the pulse, roamed with imagination and drive in his short spotlighted breaks and gave as good as he got. He really percolated in Husband’s funk tune “What Would Happen If Animals Had Guns, Too?” as if prepping to blast off in “Quadrant Four.” Nobody backed off, but he muscled to the front, helping light up the run of “Spectrum” tunes — “Quadrant Four,” “Spectrum,” then “Quadrant” echoing in the groove again” — that climaxed the set before a blistering encore of “Red Baron,” also from “Spectrum.”

Sheer power and precision made these 40-year-old tunes sound fresh — Cobham at maximum muscle sounding as if he wielded four-by-fours, Brown echoing Larry Coryell or John McLaughlin, Husband checklisting every fusion keyboard trick and Fierabracci teaming up tight with everybody.

Fusion lives!





Peace, TED

Let me know if you want me
to talk to Space, here, Boomer.

Regards,

HI BILLY
I SEEN YOU IN NH 2 WEEKS AGO AND GOING TO SEE YOU IN BOSTON I WOULD JUST LIKE TO SAY THANK YOU... BACK IN LIKE 1974 I GOT HOME FROM HIGH SCHOOL PLAY THE SPECTRUM ALBUM STARE AT THE INSIDE COVER LISTENING AND STARING AT YOU BEHIND THE FIBES KIT. THEN IN 1976 BILLY COBHAM AND GEORGE DUKE BAND LIVE IN EUROPE I WORE THAT ALBUM OUT FROM THERE ON I MUST OF BOUGHT EVERY ALBUM, CD, VIDEO, YOU ARE ON ..YOU ARE SUCH A HUGE INSPIRATION .THE FIRST JAZZ TUNE I PLAYED TO WAS BILLIES BOUNCE.. YOU WITH GEORGE BENSON STILL TO THIS DAY I PLAY TO THAT I STUDIED WITH ALAN DAWSON, JOE MORELLO, TOMMY CAMPBELL, TO NAME A FEW AND SOMEDAY WOULD LOVE TO HAVE A LESSON WITH YOU SOMEDAY ...I KNOW YOUR SO BUSY THAT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE ..BUT WHO KNOWS .... SO BILLY THANK YOU.. CAUSE OF YOU I MAKE A LIVING PLAYING AND TEACHING DOING WHAT I LOVE THANKS....... FROM MY HEART TO YOURS ..JOEY RIZZO

Hey Guys! Gary Husband has amazing photos of the latest Spectrum 40 Tour on his facebook page... Really looking forward to the live CD and 2015 tour too! I'll try to upload a few...

http://edoctorsmith.com/cobham/boomer1.jpg
http://edoctorsmith.com/cobham/boomer2.jpg
http://edoctorsmith.com/cobham/boomer3.jpg

I saw the Sept 11 show at the Howard Theatre.....Tremendous show.

What happened there was something I had never seen before.....Before the music started the curtain went up and two people were on stage: Boomer and an instructor from Howard University.....The instructor interviewed Boomer.....Was fascinating.....Boomer talked about working with Miles Davis and how the music business is constantly changing and other things.....Good stuff.

---TConrad

Sounds fascinating and I think
that would be a great thing to
do to promote jazz and music.

Regards,

Went to Boston this weekend to see spectrum 40 at the Regatta Bar in Cambridge with Walter K. The room was sort of bizarre in that it has very low ceilings so the sound is kind of compressed and actually loud when they get it cranked up.

Stayed for both sets and enjoyed it tremendously ! These were the last two shows of the tour so the musicians "emptied the tank " and gave us all they had, which was greatly appreciated by the intimate crowd.

It's pretty cool when you can sit 10' away from the band and get your face blown off ! LOL

a nice surprise was the insertion of the song Radioactive from the Warning album in the second set. Hadn't heard that one in a long time. as usual , they played tunes written by the other band members like If the Animals Had Guns, and Sphere of Influence .

Two nice highights for me was meeting another long-time member of the board, Joe Rizzo and his lovely wife (of course , she is originally from Long Island , NY ). and also my friend and drum teacher, Kenwood Dennard, who I had not seen personally in a number of years !

Spent the remainder of the weekend at Walter's beautiful house with his guests Gary Husband , and leading economist Professor Anant Sundaram. We went to TCAN the next night to check the venue out ( Walter volunteers there for many of their events ) . The artist was guitarist Johnny A, and he was very good. The sound of the room is amazing and they have been starting to book jazz and fusion artists there. If you are in the area in and around Natick, MA, do yourself a favor and go see someone play there. Very affordable and very comfortable.

I'll add a couple of photos courtesy of Anant. When I get more , I will post them


I also had the pleasure of spending the train ride back to CT with Gary . and guess who met us at the train station to pick him up . Alan Holdsworth !! Gary will be beginning the short tour with him this week , and he will be returning to Boston this Thursday at Johnny D's , and then will be at Iridium in NYC this coming weekend. I plan on being there for the sat. night show.

Will post a few photos courtesy of Anant, and if and when I get more I will post them.

Peace, TED


[img]

That is so great, Ted!  Thanks,
for this cool post.

I am so happy you got to see
everyone Dean, Gary, Ric and
look at Kenwood!

When I arrived at the university,
Kenwood was in his last and
year of beginnings, with Pat
Martino.  Remember that?

Such memories.  

Regards,

HI ALL I WENT TO THE SHOW IN NH ALSO 2 WEEKS LATER IN BOSTON WHAT  A TREAT BOTH SHOWS DID DIFFERENT SETS SO AWESOME GOT TO MEET BOARD MEMBER TED E AWESOME GUY SMILE ON HIS FACE ALL NITE ..GOT TO SEE MY GOOD FRIEND LENNIE DIMUZIO WROT E THE BOOK TALES FROM THE CYMBAL BAG HE WAS WITH ZILDJIAN FOR 42 YEARS THEN SABIAN AFTER THAT BILLY LIT UP WHEN HE SEEN HIM .ALSO KENWOOD WAS THERE JUST A GREAT NITE HAVE A GREAT DAY DRUM BROTHERS & SISTERS LATER JOEY RIZZO

Hey Joey, Can you post the photo that was taken of us so we can all see it ? I want a copy ! LOL


And to Pete: Yes I remember the Pat Martino stuff well. That's around the time I first met Woody and Delmar Brown. The album was called Joyous Lake and the fusion cover band I was in at the time used to play the tune "Line Games" , a favorite.

Peace, TED