The Arts & Entertainment Newspaper for the Wood River Valley & Beyond MORE JAZZ JAMBOREE PHOTOS
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Shhhhh! Jazz in session
The Jason Spooner Band Comes to Ketchum BY MARYLAND DOLL
“We love to play in Sun Valley anytime we are out West. The people are nice and you can’t beat the natural beauty of those mountains—it’s a real spiritual place,” says frontman Jason Spooner of The Jason Spooner Band. The band is set to play a show at Whiskey Jacques’ in Ketchum on Friday, Oct. 24, one of 15 stops on their six-state Western tour. The New England quartet—made up of Reed Chambers on drums, Adam Frederick on bass, keyboardist/pianist Warren McPherson, and Spooner on lead vocals and guitar—is currently on tour promoting its fourth album, “chemical,” which was released on Sept. 16. The three-week tour will cover Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, and end in California. Spooner has been on the music scene for nearly 20 years. He started as a solo artist in New England before meeting Chambers and Frederick and forming The Jason Spooner Band in the late ’90s. In an interview, Spooner discussed his new album, ongoing tour and the most recent addition to the band, keyboardist/pianist McPherson. “The bare-bones trio formation was fun for a while but we all knew that four was the magic number. When keyboards and piano are the addition, your sound changes exponentially… especially with a player like Warren, who brings a strong musical foundation and melodic sense to the picture,” explains Spooner. “It definitely added a level of musical maturity to the band.” The new album also shows a level of maturity in the recording process that the band went through to make it. “It was a completely unique process for us,” said Spooner. “In the past, we did a tracking situation where each instrumental track is added separately, and on ‘chemical’ we recoded the album live.” As for their sound, publicity manager Michelle Gutenstein-Hinz describes the band’s music as having the ability to “seamlessly blend a variety of musical influences and flavors into a cohesive
Gator Nation, featuring washboard, accordion, sax and penny whistle, made a colorful debut at the Sun Valley Jazz Festival.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
G
ator Nation stirred up a little swamp fever as the six-piece band spiked Sun Valley’s rarefied air with washboard and zydeco two-steps. And Billy Mata and the Texas Tradition, who looked like they should be playing at an LBJ barbecue, endowed Sun Valley’s ski lodges with a touch of Bob Wills swing tunes and honky-tonk dancehall tunes. The two were newcomers to the Sun Valley Jazz Festival, which celebrated its 25th anniversary this past week with royal blue skies and gently falling golden leaves. About 4,000 people attended this year’s festival, said co-di-
rector Carol Loehr, whose father Tom Hazzard started the festival. “That’s on par with last year,” she added. Among the attendees was Hugh O’Riordan, a Boise man who has had a condo in Sun Valley since 1982. “I grew up in Chicago listening to Grandma’s tombstone radio and I fell in love with the music of the ’20s and ’30s,” he said. “I find the Beatles kind of boring, but I love jazz. In fact, our cat is named Bix after Bix Beiderbecke, one of the great jazz musicians of the 1920s.” The new Mardis Gras party that preceded Jazz Week was so successful that the organizers plan to restage it next year, Loehr said. Priority seating, which cost $110, sold out although the arrangement sometimes left empty seats up front. Three free noontime concerts sponsored by Atkinsons’
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