Soulful, Danceable and Real, Groovincible Plans to Get You Moving with Their New Album

If you are ever in search of a vocalist and partner in crime, you might try spotting the flyest girl in the bar and asking her to sing for you. The odds that she will deliver are slim. But it must have been Matt Klee’s lucky night, because Bianca Wright sang him a song she wrote that left an impression, and the two have been side by side musically and romantically ever since.

Three years later, Wright and Klee joined Jacob Gleason to form Groovincible in 2011 in Klee’s garage in Fair Oaks. The idea was to put Wright’s voice at the forefront of the band, with Klee on drums, Gleason on guitar and tenor sax and Wright on the mic, shared with Gleason. Prior, Gleason and Klee bonded over tacos and hours spent in the backseat of a crusty old tour van during the 2009 Hippy Feet tour with Sacramento’s well-known fusion band ZuhG. Each have been involved in other musical projects, including ZuhG, but after Wright performed as a guest singer on Free Love, ZuhG’s self-released album, the three broke away to form Groovinicible, allowing them an opportunity to write their own material.

Now, after wrapping up their self-titled debut album recorded at Pus Cavern Studios (currently available for purchase and streaming online) they are prepping for their CD release show, which is on Saturday, July 27 at Blue Lamp. They have also added on three members: Tony Marks on bass, Sam Phelps on keys and Edward Hurff on baritone sax.

If you’re limited on words, you could say Groovincible is somewhere in the funk/soul/jazz realm, with moments of rock. Their aim is to keep things grooving, interesting and danceable, hence “Groovincible.” Those are the words that Gleason offered up during a phone interview with him and Wright. But that’s just brushing the surface.

For those who like to turn on a dynamic album and listen the whole way through, Groovincible is for you. Just when you think you’ve heard it all, the band pulls something else out of their sleeve, whether its ethereal harmonies or tempo changes and distortion.

In the span of 43 minutes laid over 12 tracks, Groovincible throws one drop (the reggae groove), Klezmer, tablas (Indian drums) and distorted sax into the mix. Of the 12, only four are under five minutes in length, and two of the songs are broken up over two tracks. That’s just how Gleason writes, with at least three “parts” per song.

As he explains it, a song amounts to “whatever amount of time it takes to express the idea,” whether it’s five minutes or 30.

This album evolved out of several months of Klee and Gleason jamming in Klee’s garage. Everything was recorded. At the end of the recording sessions they cut out whatever didn’t sound good from each track, leaving behind the cream of the crop to make up the songs. Gleason actually ended up cutting out a lot of guitar, leaving “implied” guitar parts in a number of songs while layering saxophone, keys, bass and flute.

The exception was a “magical take” of “Bari Krishna,” recorded in one go. “Bari Krishna,” with the overlap of fluttering guitar and horn segments, brings to mind a chase scene in a spy film, blazing through alleys in a getaway car in Cairo or Kabul.

Other songs, such as opening track “Downtown Shindig” or “Punk Step,” could easily sound off during one of Quentin Taratino’s killing sprees.

As far as Gleason is concerned, if their songs have cinematic flavor, then they are succeeding.

Aside from “Bari Krishna,” which is instrumental, Gleason and Wright wrote the vocals over the songs, with Wright penning a lot of the hooks and choruses, and adding a soulful touch.

“A lot of people homogenize soul, R&B and hip-hop,” Wright says. “But when people are singing they’re really pushing for what they’re inspired by… My lyrical style is more soulful.”

She takes her cues from the likes of Jill Scott and Erykah Badu.

Beyond recording, Wright’s feminine energy is critical to the band, Gleason says.

As Wright sees it, she contributes both nurturing and vulnerable elements to the band, particularly during live performances.

“If I’m going to be up there on stage, then I like everything I do to be ‘real,’” Wright explains. “I like to set the vibe and be comfortable with people, looking at people, looking at who I’m singing to.”

While Wright brings the soul, it is apparent that Gleason brings the glue. Or is the glue, when it comes to the band. That includes music theory and recording.

“I live, eat and dream music,” he says.

While it’s definitely not an unusual thing to hear coming from a musician, it doesn’t feel like false advertising. He’s one of those who got an early start in music theory, coming from an upbringing where instruments and encouragement were consistently available, starting with mom breaking out the pans, to a keyboard, saxophone and eventually a guitar. By age 15 he was in his first rock band, and music has been an everyday part of life ever since.

“I sit on my ass and watch Game of Thrones once in a while,” he confesses.

Beyond that, however, time boils down to songwriting and performing.

However they manage to do it, between Gleason, Wright and Klee and those who have hopped on board since, Groovincible has developed an unmistakable sound.

“We’re just a bunch of people who make noise together,” Gleason says. “We get to play music we love with people we love.”

Whether or not Klee realized it at the time, he was doing everyone a favor when he asked Wright to sing.

Groovincible’s CD Release show is Saturday, July 27, 2013 at Blue Lamp (1400 Alhambra Blvd). Also performing will be Tao Jiriki and Brian Rogers. $10 cover includes the new Groovincible CD. Doors open at 8 p.m., show starts at 9 p.m., 21-and-over only. For more information visit Groovincible.com

A New Album, A New Leaf

Since 2007 ZuhG has been representing Sacramento with its groove-funk style and earth-centric liberal aesthetic. They play a bit of blues, a bit of jazz and a bit of psychedelic rock. They mix hip-hop and saxophones, flutes and Rastafarian herbal idolatry. Yet, despite the multiple influences and wide range of instrumentation, ZuhG is able to sound crisp and precise. The songs on the bands upcoming CD Free Love are well produced, the bass lays in the pocket with the drums, it shifts in and out of blues guitar movements and references other standards like “Footprints.” On a musical level the group invokes a wide variety of influences, all courtesy of the guitar work of JR Halliday and Bryan Nichols, the drum work of Matt Klee, the beatbox-flow of Charlie Wheeler, and saxophone melodies from Jake Gleason. Bianca Wright holds down the luscious background vocals. All of these performers create movements that build, ebb and hit in syncopation under the optimistic experiential vocals and lyrics of Nichols.

Through multiple incarnations, ZuhG has pushed forward and with a backbone of Nichols and Klee, they’ve found a level of success, a degree of professionalism–dare we call it such–that enables the members to identify themselves firstly as musicians, secondly as anything else.

Curiously enough the group collectively (with a few friends) operates ZuhG Life, a store inside of Downtown Plaza where everything sells on consignment, and the music culture of Sacramento holds some 1,000 square feet of retail space in a largely corporate environment. Submerge was able to catch up with Nichols and discuss the upcoming album, the storefront, the popular pastime of parking-lot camping, optimism and the ever fashionable burrito windshield.

Tell me about the ZuhG Life store, how did that come about?
It’s a local music store basically. All one wall is CDs, and we’ve got local band T-shirts as well. I was booking live shows for the mall, and I needed to get paid in advance for a road trip to Oregon. When I went to get paid they brought me up to this empty store. I thought they were going to fire me, but they asked, “Hey you want to open some kind of music store?” And we just did it. The stores helped us get a lot of recognition. We’re on the news and stuff. Sometimes people think we’re called ZuhG Life, I’ve seen it on flyers. That’s funny.

Did you have any retail experience? How was that transition into owning your own shop?
I don’t really have any experience. I worked at Surf & Skate, and I hated it. I had to follow the customers around the store. The owner was all on me about it. Even when it was obvious that people just wanted to look around.

ZuhG has to be one of weirdest names I’ve ever heard for a band. How’d you decide on that?
ZuhG means to be unlike others, and to do something different. I think it’s German. I found it in a Rolling Stone ad. I turned it in for a homework assignment. I asked my teacher, after we’d been playing, “Hey I named my band that, do you think I could get that ad back?” But he said it was a really good example and he wanted to keep it. At the time I was like cool, I’ll just pick up another Rolling Stone, but I never did. I’ve never seen it since. My friend has searched countless dictionaries, and she’s never found the word.

What’s the craziest thing that’s happened to you on stage?
I caught on fire at Northstar ski resort. They always have these little propane heaters on stage. The back of my shirt caught on the little flame, and I started patting myself out when I realized I was on fire. Then JR comes over and tries to pat me down. We’re playing at the foot of this ice skating rink and everyone is watching by now. JR couldn’t put me out either, so I threw my guitar down and literally stopped-dropped-and-rolled right in the middle of the stage. It went out. The whole back of my shirt was gone. I have one little scar. It was bad at first but it healed fine.

Did you finish the set?
Yeah, we played three more songs. I think more people checked us out that day than ever.

That’s flaming! You got any other cool road stories?
We don’t ever get hotels because that would be all our gig money. Every night on the road we try to find some friends or get someone to let us sleep at their house. Sometimes we don’t get so lucky. Once in Ventura we played a shitty show, no one was there, so we just slept in the parking lot. There was this big rundown bus in the parking lot so we just pulled our cars next to it. Random [Abilideze] was with us. He was pissed that night. Six people were sleeping in the van, which is ridiculous because it only sleeps three comfortably. Dudes were sleeping in the front seat of the van. I have a little tent and I posted it up right on the concrete. Jake, our sax player, was sleeping on a cot right outside. Our roadie was sleeping in the trailer. That was fun.

You hear about bands that hate each other when they’re in the van, but when they get on stage they have amazing shows. Does that describe ZuhG, or do you get along all the time?
We bitch at each other for sure. There’s definitely some hissy fits out there. Usually whoever is pissed will just play with a ton of energy on stage that night. One time after a show in Oregon at like 3 in the morning, we stopped at a Taco Bell, and we didn’t hear our drunk bass player say he wanted a taco, so he walked out of the van. He went and sat on a curb in the parking lot. When we got up to the window we ordered him a taco and a burrito, because we forgot. I went over to our bass player. I said, “Here’s a burrito, sorry we forgot.” He grabbed the burrito and walked over to the van and threw it hella hard at the windshield. There was a whole fight in the parking lot. The Taco Bell people started calling the cops. It was hilarious. Stuff like that happens every once in a while.

Do you have any thoughts on the recent tsunami in Japan?
I was thinking of throwing a big benefit show at the ZuhG Life store to raise some money we could send over there. I want to do something to help.
 
If you turned into a human-instrument mutant because of Japanese radiation that had made it over to Sacramento via the Pacific winds, what instrument would you prefer to be combined with?
My right arm would be a melodica, my left arm would be the neck of a guitar, my upper torso would be the body of a guitar, my right leg would be a high hat, my left leg would be a rain stick. That way if I did a handstand I could work that noise out. My head would be a djembe, and all my fingers would be kazoos! This would be a cool painting; one rad man band.

How often does ZuhG go skinny dipping together?
Ha! Never. I don’t want to see these guys naked. We do bathe in the ocean and rivers often when we’re on the road, but not naked.

Why are you such an optimist in such trying times?
In our song “New Shoes (Hippy Feet),” the hook of the first part of the song is “I’m feeling so good, I’m alive today/I’m feeling so good, and I can’t complain.” Living the ZuhG Life makes me happy, might as well be positive and peaceful. Life’s too short to be so serious. There’s no point in being pissed off all the time or pessimistic. I get stressed out every once in a while with everything that’s going on, but I love everything I’m doing, so it works out.

You sing a lot about the environment, wouldn’t it be better for the earth if ZuhG hitchhiked when you all went on the road?
Our mechanic friend, Ryan Casey, is looking for a diesel for us that we can covert to run off veggie oil. Then we’ll be green and smell like French fries all the time, but it’ll be worth it.

Theodor Adorno hated Jazz because he said the fans and musicians who thought it deviated from more traditional song structures failed to realize that it always maintained a relative steady beat, and therefore they were pretty much just hipsters–in so many words. Why do you hate jazz so much?
I love Jazz! What’s a hipster? People always say that about people but I don’t get it. Am I one?

ZuhG’s CD release show will take place at Beatnick Studios on April 9, 2011. The band will also play an Earth Day show on April 13 at Sierra College in Rocklin.

Local four-piece difficult to define

Happy 4/20. If only you were in Arcata, you could be ZuhGin’ out.

After CD release parties in Sacramento and Roseville last week, the four-piece from the City of Trees cruised the ZuhGmobile to Humboldt for a weekend lineup of shows capped off by a 4/20 celebration Monday at the Humboldt State University Quad.

ZuhG will perform at noon at Sierra College in Rocklin on Thursday. The evening before, on Earth Day, they have an all-ages gig at Pyramid Alehouse in Sacramento.

On the April Second Saturday Art Walk, in Sacramento on April 11, ZuhG lured the audience away from the art and the couches in the back of the Blue Lamp to the dance floor with their set that featured songs from their new album ZuhG Life. A heap of jackets piled onto one couch beneath the artwork of Brian Nichols, ZuhG’s frontman.

“Listen to OutKast,” Nichols said while they played a “So Fresh So Clean” interlude.

Shoeless, Nichols led the band on guitar and vocals. Justin Vance opened their set with his bassline for “Accessories,” an homage to the mundanity in life.

Brian “Bot” Swart was the highlight of the night and, in a way, he is in ZuhG Life, playing tenor saxophone, giving the band the sound they want—”to be unlike others,” how they define ZuhG.

Self-taught drummer Matt Klee said in an interview at Nichols’s house that in order to get better he had to get uncomfortable. So, with Nichols, he took a jazz ensemble class at Sierra College a year ago. That’s where they met Bot.

In that class, Nichols said he met a mentor of sorts who taught him jazz guitar.

“I wanted to play jazz guitar, and he played way sicker than me,” he said. “Now, it’s all about practicing daily. We’re trying to get better every day as a band.”

A semester’s worth of jam sessions and Bot was a part of ZuhG. Though it wasn’t their intention, he replaced the band’s cello player, Jarrod Matthews, who left the band after Bot’s sax was added. (ZuhG Life’s bonus track features an improv session with Matthews and Bot.)

The youngest in the band at 19, Bot gives ZuhG its jazz element that makes the funk-rock-reggae-jam—whatever you’d like to call it—band a little hard to categorize. Last year ZuhG was nominated for a Sammie in the SN&R in the R&B category. This year, they earned the nomination in the Jam Band category. Recently, High Times Magazine online added them as an unsigned band of the week.

Both Bot and Nichols are studying music, though Nichols is at Sacramento City College now.

Local radio station KWOD 106.5 plays their song “Shangri La,” because it’s “reggae enough,” Nichols said at his house. “I wanted them to choose ‘Lately,’ but they said it was ‘too jazzy.'”

Bot and the guys laughed it off. “Too jazzy is a compliment,” Bot said.

Surely their music wasn’t too jazzy, or maybe it was, to make enough cash to produce ZuhG Life at Sacramento’s Pus Cavern Studios. The recording is great.

“We’d like to thank Northstar and Sugar Bowl for funding this album,” Nichols joked, because they were able to book a couple shows a month at the Tahoe resorts during winter.

Tahoe in the winter. They’ll see the coast for spring. From San Jose to Ocean Beach they have shows lined up along the coast for two weeks until they return to Davis to play the G. St. Pub, May 16 at Beatnik Studios Boobie Bash and May 23 at Marylin’s on K.