new Vida Blue cd October 7th

[Tooly]

this sounds good,, im gonna have to check it out when it comes out

[MarcO]

VIDA BLUE

THE ILLUSTRATED BAND

http://www.bighassle.com/a_vida_blue.html

Inspiration often strikes when it's least expected. Just ask Page McConnell, the keyboardist for Phish and leader of Vida Blue, who went to Miami Beach on vacation last March and wound up laying the groundwork for an exciting new musical collaboration. At clubs in South Beach and Little Havana, McConnell managed to hook up with an eclectic posse of local musicians known as the Spam Allstars. He liked what he heard and sat in with the band one night. The favor was returned when the Allstars' frontman, DJ Le Spam (a.k.a. Andrew Yeomanson), joined Vida Blue onstage in Providence and Philadelphia a month later.

The bandleaders thereupon made plans to join forces in the studio. A few weeks later, they met up at the Bee Gees’ Middle Ear Studios in Miami Beach, and the second Vida Blue album - The Illustrated Band, an exuberantly jam-packed, genre-bridging triumph - was in the can. The project almost literally took wing at the speed of sound, and the musicians willingly went with the flow. Less than two months passed from first introductions to finished album.

"After seeing the Spam Allstars, I immediately thought we should do something with the two bands," McConnell recalls. "They're kind of unique: a Latin band with the deejay/turntable thing. They have quite a scene going on down there."

Indeed, the Spam Allstars - DJ Le Spam (turntables, loops, samples), Tomas Diaz (timbales), AJ Hill (saxophone), Mercedes Abal (flute), John Speck (trombone) and Lazaro Alfonso (percussion) - were recently nominated for a Latin Grammy for their third album, Fuacata! (which loosely translates as "a slap in the face"). The title derives from their weekly club gig at Hoy Como Ayer in Little Havana, which kicked off in 2001. Word spread quickly, and the Spam Allstars packed the house with a polyglot crowd of Anglos, Latinos, hip-hoppers, arty types, and music fanatics who ran the gamut in terms of age and ethnicity.

McConnell and his Vida Blue bandmates - bassist Oteil Burbridge and drummer Russell Batiste - thrived on the musical crosscurrents from their collaboration with the Miami-based Allstars. "They had a blast," McConnell enthuses. "Russell really got off on the Cuban rhythms, and Oteil's playing some great stuff on this album as well. We'd just finished our tour when we went into record, and Russell and Oteil were playing really well together. It was storming."

Quite simply, they came in and started blowing. You can hear communication, exuberance, and freedom in these longish tracks, two of which clock in at over 20 minutes. It's improvised music that builds on Afro-Cuban and Latino bases, with Vida Blue functioning as something like an R&B rhythm section. The Illustrated Band is infused with a sense of immediacy and spirit of spontaneous creation. Think of Miles Davis' On the Corner, with the corner relocated to Little Havana.

During the session, McConnell moved around between piano, Fender Rhodes, organ, clavinet and synthesizer. After the sessions, he took the tapes back home to Vermont and edited down the album's four pieces - "The Illustrated Band," "Charmpit," "You Don't Know" and "Little Miami" - from the monster jams, several of which originally ran for over 40 minutes.

It's all gone so well that Vida Blue and the Spam Allstars plan on taking their collaboration to the stage this fall, with tour dates to be announced.

McConnell marvels at the informality that led to the making of The Illustrated Band. "It just fell together," he recalls. "I said, "Wanna play?," and they were really open to it and showed up ready to go."

The Illustrated Band will be released October 7th on Sanctuary Records.