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| The Jack Brass Band, based in Minneapolis, has been around for 10 years. They play New Orleans-style brass music, with a Midwestern twist. (Image courtesy of the Jack Brass Band) |
Minneapolis, Minn. — New Orleans-style brass bands are a rarity in Minnesota. So are young musicians who resist the lure of electric guitars or turntables and stick with wind instruments.
Erik Jacobson plays sousaphone and Mike Olander pounds the bass drum with the Jack Brass Band. Both discovered New Orleans brass band music in their teens. They gradually became enamored with it because of its rhythm, its soul, and as Jacobson puts it, its "post-high school performance potential."
"If you're a trombone player, there aren't many things you can do if you want to continue playing after that," Jacobson says. "Whereas if you pick up a guitar in high school, you're going to probably always play guitar."
"The other thing is that most of the time, the horn players -- they're the side dish," says Mike Olander. "They're not the main entree. In a brass band, you're the main deal."
The brass band sound, in Jacobson's view, has something other more popular forms of music don't have enough of -- authenticity.
"I hear an alt-country band, and a lot of times it's in a tongue-in-cheek way, but you're not going to hear a tongue-in-cheek brass band," Jacobson says. "People are really playing it because it moves them, and I think its authenticity draws us musicians into it. But I think the authenticity also draws the listeners into it as well, and they can tell that, 'Yeah, these guys are for real.'"
According to Jacobson there are two kinds of brass music, traditional and New Orleans style. Both are heavily improvisational. The difference is in the instrumentation, and to a lesser extent, style and tone.
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I hear an alt-country band, and a lot of times it's in a tongue-in-cheek way, but you're not going to hear a tongue-in-cheek brass band.
- Eric Jacobson, Jack Brass Band
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Traditional brass music features brass instruments, a guitar or banjo and a drummer behind a drum kit. New Orleans brass bands contain strictly brass musicians and two drummers, one on bass drum and one on the snare. Both play with the drums strapped to their chests, marching band-style.
The kind of brass music Jacobson and Olander prefer sounds different from the Dixieland jazz people associate with New Orleans. It was patented in the 1970s by a group called the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and it's funkier.
Jacobson says the Jack Brass Band has somehow managed to put its own Upper Midwestern imprint on the music.
"We didn't grow up with all the '70s soul hits that those guys did. But we grew up with -- of course here, Prince -- but we also grew up with ACDC and Genesis, and so some of those things sneak into the music," Jacobson says.
Nonetheless, Jacobson's favorite track on the Jack Brass Band's new CD, "You Don't Know Me," is a '70s soul hit that crossed over into rock -- a cover of Stevie Wonder's "Livin for the City."
"It definitely has a different sound than other brass bands that have recorded before, so I'm really excited about that song in particular," Jacobson says. "It's the lead-off cut, but that one's going to show up on a lot of iPods over the next few months as people download that song. It's definitely a great tune."
The Jack Brass Band has been around for about 10 years, and its members range from 24-34 years old. It's made a concerted effort to learn as much as possible about the history of New Orleans brass music and its performers. Members have traveled several times to the city itself, attended lots of shows and befriended many musicians.
Jacobson says they know all the top players and who've they've recorded with.
"To us, these are our celebrities," Jacobson says. "I care more about who the Rebirth Brass Band's trumpet players are then I do, say, about who's playing on the Timberwolves."
Members of the Jack Brass Band have also been a lifeline to those musicians in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. They've held benefit concerts, booked shows for them in other cities and sent them at least 40 instruments.
Mike Olander says most of the phone numbers in his address book have the New Orleans "504" area code. He kept many musicians in touch with each other after the storm.
"It was almost like a game of telephone, where I'd get calls from different guys in the same band, and they wouldn't necessarily know where each other was," says Olander. "But I could then say, 'Oh, yeah, Phil, you're over in Alabama? Yeah, Stanford's over in Houston.'"
Phil Frazier plays sousaphone for the Rebirth Brass Band in New Orleans. He's in Houston now, but expects to be home for the holidays. Some Jack Brass Band members are concerned they'll be viewed as yet another group of white marauders stealing something from black culture.
But Frazier considers them good friends and great musicians, who have as much of a right to play this music as anyone.
"Music is universal," Frazier says. "It has no color on it at all."
Mike Olander says his band is comfortable with its identity.
"We're not trying to be from New Orleans, because we're not," he says. "But we are trying to expand the music, and let people know where this music came from, and do it honor."
Although this is a busy time of year for most bands, the Jack Brass Band won't be playing on New Year's Eve. A CD release party is tentatively scheduled for the end of January.
Summer is the season for brass band music in Minnesota. That's when you'll find the Jack Brass Band playing at graduation parties, weddings, and, in the New Orleans brass band tradition, in parades.
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