3 minute read
MUSIC
Luna ’68
e City Champs take you to outer space and get you back in time for grits ’n gravy.
We’re a band that likes to rehearse. We like to get together and play.” Guitarist Joe Restivo is telling me about e City Champs, and what makes the soul-jazz trio unique. “We’ve had that chemistry from day one. We just have. It’s easy when we play. In some cases, we haven’t played together for years, but we get together and it’s just like the rst day.”
For the Champs, that rst day was some 15 years ago, but now, listening to Luna ’68 (Big Legal Mess), their rst album in over a decade, that chemistry is as palpable as when they started. One reason they continue to inspire each other may be their determination to keep things fresh. Although their stock-in-trade has been a sound that could easily become formulaic — the organ-guitar-drums trio in the groove-heavy Jimmy Smith vein — they’ve never been constrained by it. ough even that sound is hard to pull o well, the group has brought a more venturesome, explorative approach to that basic foundation from the beginning.
Now, on their long-awaited third album, their explorations have taken them to stratospheric heights. is January, fans got a taste of this from the title track and lead single, which evokes the space-bedazzled “futuristic” sounds of a half-century ago. e same goes for the album closer, “Voyage to Vega (For Felix).” Yet there are no rockets or radio telemetry sounds in evidence: e group creates such otherworldly atmospheres in their own minimalist way. In the right hands, even cymbal rolls and a Hammond B3 organ can sound futuristic. And sitting comfortably in this minimalist mix is a new sound for the Champs: a synthesizer.
It’s used sparingly, a perfect complement to the combo’s core sound. And it’s a avor keyboardist Al Gamble has grown increasingly fond of in recent years. As drummer George Sluppick notes, “We always bring the in uence of whatever other projects we’ve been doing. So Al, playing with St. Paul and the Broken Bones, gets to play synth in that band.” A er Restivo brought the title track to the Champs, Sluppick recalls Gamble saying, “‘Man, what if I put some synth on this tune?’ And Joe and I were both like, ‘Hell yeah! Please!’ It’s an analog thing anyway. So to any of the traditionalists who say, ‘ at’s not traditional soul jazz,’ well, we’ve never been a traditional soul-jazz band. Even though we leaned farther into that than anything else, we’ve always had our own voice. e fact that Al wants to play some synthesizer, I think is great.” Gamble’s newfound love of oldschool analog textures dovetailed nicely with Restivo’s musical interests. “I’m really into Piero Umiliani, an Italian lm composer, a piano player, and synth player,” the guitarist says. “ e stu he did in the late ’60s, early ’70s had a futuristic sound to it. And he de nitely had a funk thing, and a jazz context, and kind of a bossa nova context. Really pretty themes. And Al and George are just really open to working on things, so when I bring in original stu that is not in the Jimmy Smith vein, they’re like, ‘Yeah, let’s try it!’”
None of which is to say that the City Champs have abandoned their fundamental love of soul-jazz boogaloo. Hearing tracks like “Mack Lean” or “Skinny Mic,” you’d think these astronauts had re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and splashed down into a plate of fried chicken. In some ways, these tracks expand the band’s sound as well, with Restivo’s guitar tone sporting more grit than ever. And on “Freddie King for Now,” Gamble’s organ is served with a huge dollop of glorious distortion.
“We made sure the organ was just screaming,” says Restivo. “We developed that song years ago and just kept it around. at song’s like going 100 miles an hour with the top down kind of vibe. A total face melter. Which is not really on any of our other records quite like that. Aggressive. We do that live and we go crazy. We go for it.”
JAMIE HARMON e City Champs
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