Thomas Crone
BBT&MB
From left: Bonfili, Facchin, Franklin, Vianello, Burns, Stephen, and Muser
So you want to put together a band. You settle on a sound; you find complementary players, ideally with personalities that mesh. Songs are written, covers learned, shows booked. In time, an idea becomes reality, in the dual forms of recording and performance. Then, throw in enough promotion to let the people know. That’s a tough-enough blueprint to follow for a group of just two people. Once you get multiple musicians involved, though, it’s definitely a challenge keeping the whole operation moving in one direction.
Big Brother Thunder & the MasterBlasters is a large band, with solid ambitions and a lineup filled with talented multi-instrumentalists who happen to get along personally just as well as they jibe as players. It describes itself as a group that “blends funk-struttin’-soul with rock and jazz by pulling from African, Caribbean, and Brazilian styles and rhythms.” To get that sound, seven (and soon, eight) St. Louis musicians have come together from diverse backgrounds, carrying into the group a host of influences.
The band has plans to add a new member. But at press time, its ranks included Sheri Facchin on vocals and percussion, Gabe Bonfili on drums, Jeff Burns on percussion, Dave Muser on trumpet and vocals, Andy Stephen on keys and organ, Matt Vianello on guitar, and Drew Franklin on bass, sax, and vocals.
The short version of the band’s history begins, according to Franklin, “in 2011, [when] I met Gabe and Jeff, who are cousins. Soon after, we became involved in a few projects that somewhat fizzled out over a short time. Finding that we had a pretty good relationship and compatibility as a rhythm section, we decided it was time to start a new band. We wanted to do more than ‘make people dance’… We had a vision of creating an old-school soul/funk sound mixed in with our favorite West African, Brazilian, and Afro-Cuban sounds. The three of us knew we couldn’t just ask any old body to play with us… We were asking some of the best people we knew of in town. We got lucky and landed Sheri and Matt.”
While the band started out playing a hybrid of covers and originals, it is currently transitioning into a unit playing 80 percent originals, with the balance made up of covers from multiple eras and genres. In terms of songwriting, Franklin says that falls upon, “generally speaking, whoever comes up with a riff, part, or whole song written out. It’s still allowed to be arranged in a way that the band feels works. For example, I may write an entire song, all musical parts, including vocals. But if a member isn’t feeling the part, or feels something stronger, we are all very OK with that person putting in something that either works more effectively or is just simply a much stronger part. I may play bass, as well as the saxophone, but no one in our band knows how to ‘do what we do best’ better than that person on their respective instrument. We’ve all put a bit of time into figuring out what sounds good and what doesn’t, from our voices to our instruments.”
“We obviously want to be a part of the funk/soul revival,” Facchin adds. “And it’s mostly just every player in the group really loving the genre. It’s feel-good music, music that represents unity of people, love, passion. It’s music that has catchy melodies, that makes you want to dance. Music that moves your soul. So in thinking about all these aspects, we want to embody these characteristics. We want to have a young, diverse group of players that love to play soulful music. We want to not only appeal to the older generation who are familiar with these sounds, but also to be examples to the younger generation.”
To date, the band’s played shows with a wide range of local acts, on a host of stages. It’s also been selected as support for bands as different as Orgone, Lee Fields and the Expressions, and Chuck Berry. BBT and the MBs EP, recorded at Suburban Pro Studios by Matt Sawicki, is available for free online. Struttin’, recorded at South-Fi Studio by Gary Copeland, officially releases this summer. “We’re just making some final additions and revisions,” Franklin says. “We don't want to rush it.”
Ultimately, though, this is a band built for the stage. With all those bodies, all that personality, all that sound, it’s capable of not only lighting up an audience, but also, on a good night, getting lost in its own sound.
“There really isn’t a better feeling on Earth than when every single piece of the band is in sync and it sounds so good that we actually start dancing onstage,” says Facchin. “And of course, the audience eats that up. Because not only do we sound amazing, we don’t just look like we’re having the time of our lives up there. We are!”
Sample music at reverbnation.com/bbtandthembs, and catch the band at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Whitaker Music Series (4344 Shaw, 314-577-5100, mobot.org) on July 9 at 7:30 p.m.
Now Hear This: Ellen the Felon, Bang Bang Bang
This might sound like faint praise, but Ellen Cook says that after hearing the cabaret-pop of her debut full-length album, “Even people that I thought hated my music said that they really liked it, and that I’d never sounded better.”
Bang Bang Bang features Cook—a.k.a. Ellen the Felon (ellenthefelon.net)—and her steady, percussive partner Matt “The Mattronome” Reyland. Together, they’re the sum total of an Ellen the Felon live show. But on the disc, she’s also joined by Abbie Steiling on violin and Dave Farver on sax.
“I would love to start another band with guitar players, horn players, just a huge band,” Cook says. “As far as playing with Matt, it’s great, because we can just pick up and go. And we communicate so well. I love when that fullness is achieved, like when Abbie plays violin with us. We’d love to have her around more often. She counters everyone perfectly. And we’ve played with trumpet players and sax players. But I don’t know that every song necessarily needs that.”
A regular presence on the St. Louis club scene, Cook and Reyland can hopefully take the strengths of the 13-song, 55-minute album as a springboard to achieve wider success, beyond the purely local.
