A Great Leap Forward for Skavoovie and the Epitones
But Skavoovie and the Epitones understand that their situation in Beantown isn't going to change, so they make major inroads wherever they can, and if the Boston media never catches up with them, so be it.
"We're actually probably more popular in Florida than we are in Boston,"
says bassist Rob Jost of the 10 member group which was formed while they were
all attending various local high schools in the Boston burbs. "I think a lot
of bands that end up succeeding in the local scene can take as much responsibility
for their success as the press, the fans, and the clubs, and I think that
may be part of the explanation for our place these days in the Boston music
scene."
"We could have done a lot more self promotion and putting ourselves out
there," adds Jost of the group, which plays the Middle East on Sept. 3. "When
you do that, you are probably going to be more in the limelight. But we've
also concentrated on making a dent in other parts of the country as well as
in Europe, so we're not surprised that we don't get much notice around town."
The band is riding high with the release of their new CD, "The Growler,"
which is their first for the major independent label Shanachie. It's a great
leap forward from their first two efforts, 1995's "Fat Footing" and 1997's
"Ripe." Here they move beyond the purist ska approach of their earlier work
and branch out into swing, some rock, and flat out scintillating pop. And
they do it right; there's not an ersatz feel to their venture beyond ska.
The jump into new areas feels like an honest, organic step in the evolution
of the band.
Unlike their past recordings, which featured some improvisation (for which
the band is notorious in the live vibe), Jost says that the songs here were
fully composed, and charts for the five man horn section were set down in
advance. "The way we worked this time was that everyone in Skavoovie come
in with their conception of their song independently or finds one other person
to write with their own way to present the song," he explains. "We got into
written music over the course of this year, which we can attribute to us becoming
more mature. That reason as well was our new trumpet player, Ben Lewis. He
came into the band rehearsal and said, 'What? You don't have charts? How does
this band function?'"
Since all of the members of the band are still in college, they get together
and play out only once a month during the school year. "It's really different
because we are so used to playing almost all the time," says Jost, who goes
to New York University. "One thing we will be doing is to take less money
to open for a marquee band instead of just headlining in smaller venues. We
sometimes turned down, say, a show with Fishbone, which would have given us
more exposure, to do our own show. We're still young, but we're learning these
things and sometimes you have to learn the hard way."
Cambridge Chronicle, 9/2/99
They're a Boston band that has toured the country numerous times,
done a major tour in Europe, put out three CD's and won Boston Music Awards,
but they simply don't get props in this town. In fact, sometimes they fall under
the radar of the Boston music scene completely.
-Ken Capobianco
Feelin' Skavoovie
"It went well enough that we decided to do a summer tour," explained trumpeter Jesse Farber. So the ten-member ska band, then a newly formed group of buddies from Newton, Massachusetts, spent the first half of their summer flipping burgers, mowing lawns and performing other chores common to off-duty high schoolers. Then they hit the road in a van and spent their earnings touring.
"Nobody had ever heard of us, and we didn't even have a demo tape, so we bought that Maximum RocknRoll book called Book Your Own Fucking Life and learned how to do it ourselves." For Skavoovie, touring became an oft-repeated ritual and the best way to disseminate its distinctive blend of traditional ska and jazz. "Obviously, we couldn't tour during the year, so it became a regular summer thing," Farber explains. "We had to pay for it out of our own pockets, but it was totally an adventure, it was totally worth it. It made us feel like a real band."
It wasn't long before other folks began to consider Skavoovie a real band, too. The outfit had the good fortune of forming right outside of Boston at the beginning of the ska revival in the early Nineties. But Skavoovie eschewed the ska-punk sound that defined Boston bands like the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, preferring traditional Jamaican ska a la the Skatalites. Skavoovie's distinguishing trait, though, was its affinity for jazz which slowly crept into the music and is today the foundation of what the bandmembers have termed "improvisational ska." The group's members (Farber; Ans Purins, vocals; Ben Lewis, trumpet; Ben Jaffe, tenor sax; Joe Wensink, euphonium and trombone; Joe Natchez, alto and baritone sax; Ben Herson, drums; Eugene Cho, keyboards; Ethan D'Ercole, guitar; Rob Jost, bass), most of them still sophomores in high school were accorded a kind of little-brother status by local ska stars the Allstonians, the Bosstones and Bim Skala Bim.
"I guess our sound went over pretty well, because we were these really little kids trying to play traditional ska," Farber muses. "We were kind of like a novelty in that respect, and I think that helped us at first."
Whatever the initial attraction, Skavoovie won converts the old-fashioned way: by busting ass as working musicians. By the time the bandmembers graduated from high school, they had completed a national tour and Fat Footin', their 1995 debut on Moon Ska Records. Fat Footin' became the fastest-selling debut album in Moon Ska history, and by the time they headed off to various New England colleges in the fall, Skavoovie's members enjoyed the distinction of being nationally known musicians before they even hit their respective campuses.
The distance between those schools proved difficult for Skavoovie. "We couldn't really rehearse, but we'd practice hard during winter breaks." Farber says. "We kept doing shows the whole time-about five a month-but the farthest we could go would be Philadelphia or D.C." With bandmates scattered between Cambridge, New York City, and Poughkeepsie, even this modest goal required considerable time and organizational skills. Making it to one gig often entailed a full weekend of travel. But the players managed to keep their musical skills sharp in many ways, mainly through enlisting in various bands. "With all of us in college and with it being impossible to rehearse, we all just jumped on a bunch of side projects," Farber explains. He and Cho joined a live hip-hop band. Natchez took to playing serious jazz gigs in Boston, and other members dabbled in drum-and-bass and deejaying. But Jost, who also plays French horn, won the prize hands down for most interesting part-time job when he played in the pit for Paul Simon's ill-fated Broadway musical Capeman.
Skavoovie scored again with its second album Ripe, in 1997. For an album recorded during vacations and holidays, it was surprisingly tight and fluent, leavened by the broadening jazz influence the musicians had developed separately during their time apart. But the strain of commuting to shows took its toll, both psychologically and financially, and last year they decided they needed a change. "We agreed we couldn't do school and the band." Farber says, "We were going to be perpetually dissatisfied with both if we tried to do them at the same time. Plus we wanted to get a new album out." So after six years of having their production and tour schedules dictated by school calendars, Skavoovie's members agreed to postpone college for a year and move into a house located in Brighton, just outside of Boston. The results of the cohabitation were marathon practice sessions and a quantum leap froward in the band's development. By ridding themselves of exams and classes, Farber and the others were able to focus on their preferred assignment: crafting a third album.
"When we weren't practicing, we'd be off writing songs," Farber recalls. "There were these hyper-intense periods of creating for us separated by six-week stretches on the road, where we did nothing. It sounds weird, but it was a healthy balance of intense work and personal space."
The result of the band's effort is its latest offer, The Growler, released in June. The music itself progresses far beyond anything Skavoovie has previously recorded, a point that's not lost on the band ("We're all, uh, pretty embarrassed about the first record now," Farber concedes). Instead, it ventures far beyond traditional ska, incorporating elements of jazz and big band. The Growler follows an arc that mirrors the band's own progress, from the opener, "Boyo," which boasts classic horn lines and sly vocals, to jazzy, big-band numbers like "Foster's Ghost" and "Any Which Way," which shed any semblance of ska in favor of pure improvisational jazz.
"There's some pretty different stuff on there," Farber notes. "I think we've gotten a little more comfortable with breaking out of the conventions. We don't need to assume that there's going to be standard ska beats and standard off-beats in every bar of each song. But in terms of working within a genre and also trying to stretch that genre, I think we're doing all right."
Farber explains all of this with a slight twinge of regret. The Boston ska scene, along with the ska scene nationwide, had declined slightly in the last two years, which leads one to wonder what the reaction to The Growler would have been if it had hit in the middle of ska's popularity. While it's selling well enough to please the band's new label, Shanachie, Farber jokes that "theoretically, if we had done this a year earlier, we probably could have been, like, mega-stars."
But after a pause, he changes his mind. "It's much better to do it now,
because this is when we needed to do it if we were going to keep going," he
decides. "Besides, now that we've gotten past that popularity thing, with
all the little kids in their outfits gone, we get an audience who are really
interested in the music."
After quitting college, the experimental ska-sters
graduate to a higher musical level
Denver Westword, 8/12/99
Like most guys in high school band, the members of Skavoovie and the Epitones didn't have dates for their junior prom. But it wasn't because they played tuba or marched around in ill-fitting uniforms with caps and ornamental braiding. Instead, they were too busy with a gig as the evening's featured entertainers to worry about corsages and cummerbunds.
-Joshua Green
Ska Survival Stories
Now, seven years later, with the old man in the group being 25 and most members still in college, Skavoovie has been around long enough to survive the ska craze and the ska backlash as younger audiences moved on to swing, and a retinue of boy bands, singing TV stars and Ricky Martins.
This issue of survival is dealt with in the song "Salad Days" from Skavoovie & the Epitones' third album and Shanachie Records debut "The Growler," followed " Fat Footin" and "Ripe" for the ska-dedicated Moon Ska label.
Speaking by phone from Boston, tenor saxophonist Ben Jaffe says, "It is a lot like it was before ska got really huge. In places like Chicago and Florida we still get big crowds. But in smaller venues like VFW halls in the Midwest where 500 kids used to come for more of a generic 'ska experience,' fewer come, but the ones who do come specifically to see us. It's kind of cool because now we have built our name solely on our music."
Far from battle worn, "The Growler" is 14 tracks of festive, upbeat stuff that bubbles with elements of jazz, Duke Ellington style swing, punk and pop. It's also brimming with crazy big band blowing, cool percussion and even some zombie wrangling, courtesy of Sean Feeney.
"I don't know why this guy (a classmate of baritone sax player Jon Natchez) hasn't been locked up," Jaffe says. "Sean put together all these weird sound effects for the 'Zombie Song' ( a likely candidate for the band's next video)."
Jaffe, who shares quarters with trumpet player Jesse Farber in Boston's Brighton neighborhood, swears he moved out of the nine bedroom Skavoovie House, where the rest of the band lives, after one too many zombie sightings.
"Don't laugh," Jaffe says, "with the money we had it took a long time to find a place like this. We'd drive around the city and if we passed a creepy, abandoned warehouse with broken windows, we would rib each other and say, "Look, guys: Skavoovie House!"
In the early days when money was really tight, the band members would sock away hard earned cash all summer so they could afford to eat while on tour and keep their heaterless bus, affectionately named "Mr. Sucks" and "Mr. Sucks Money" running.
In those "Salad Days" it was not uncommon to play shows for audiences of six people taking home one dollar per ticket sold.
Far from being well off, the band is, however, now well seasoned and mature enough to look outside of itself for talent. On "Growler" the band employs its saxophone teacher, Boston jazz legend Charlie Kohlhase, to play alto on Jaffe's "Sharp Teeth." And, as its songwriting matures the members are beginning to formulate choice, custom parts for each other.
"We have been writing parts that we think the other guys would like. It's the way on 'Sharp Teeth' where Jon transcribed the solos for Charlie and me. And Rob (Jost, Skavoovie's bass player) gave me this horn noise to play on his composition 'Desert Gold.' He said he wanted it to sound like vultures circling overhead and screeching," says confirmed animal lover Jaffe.
With addition its newest member, ex-Isaac Green and the Skalars guitar player Ethan D'ercole, Jaffe feels that Skavoovie & The Epitones are in fine form. And, to save money, they are still looking to crash at the homes of willing audience members. This, however, comes with it own culinary reward.
"If you come to see a Skavoovie show you are going to see us at our best,"
Jaffe says. "And if you invite us to stay at your house, I'm promising homemade
tacos."
Boston band Skavoovie & the Epitones will gladly cook
you tacos for a night at your house
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, Canada), 7/30/99
When Skavoovie & the Epitones first made the scene, Boston was ruled by punks, skinheads, rude boys, mods and whatever else washed ashore. Ska was just starting to awaken as a national movement and the 10 members that make up Skavoovie, at the average age of 16, were still in high school.
-Randy Matin
Skavoovie Performs at the Q The group's players have launched an assortment of side projects along the
way, but this 10-piece ska combo remains the flagship, with a whopping 11
national tours under their collective belts to date. The Growler marks
their first effort for long running "world music" indie label Shanachie, and
further growth is evident not only in improved musicianship, but also in more
adventurous stylistic hybridizations.
Like the majority of ska bands that have sprouted since the first great
"Black and White" ska revival of the late 70's, shares something of the punk
ethos on their core, but they have been more successful than most of their
piers at incorporating jazz, swing, and mainstream pop into their insistent
Jamaican beat-driven recipes.
Being a musical style which is predominantly defined by its rhythm pattern,
ska music presents a serious challenge to its players to sound fresh within
the format- a challenge which Skavoovie breaks about even with. Vocalist Ans
Purins lends hip, authentic style to the predominantly original material on
The Growler, the rhythm section is rock steady, and the five piece
horn section is fat, bulbous and swinging- applying just-right lazy drags
to shift time over the lock step bottom. Whether for stylistic effect or simply
due to the heap of brass on hand, the sound is a little murky, but not distressingly
so.
The Growler is a solid entry in the ska sweepstakes, and with Skavoovie's
average age still only 22, this punchy, vital show/dance band has a good chance
to separate itself cleanly from the genre's sound-alike pack in short order.
The Press Citizen (Iowa City, IA), 7/15/99
Formed seven years ago in the Boston area, & the Epitones finished
their debut record before they had graduated high school. Released in 1995,
that disc - Fat Footin' - became the fastest selling record in the history
of the New York-based Moon Ska label. Collegiate plans scattered the members
of the band to various parts of New England over the next few years, but dedicated
commuting kept the act going, and they followed up with the much improved Ripe
(also on Moon Ska) in 1997.
Boston Buzz Bands to Follow: Skavoovie & the Epitones
Billboard, 1/24/98
The Boston ska scene is about as healthy as it has ever been. There
are many bands making a ruckus in clubs, but none have done as well as Skavoovie
& The Epitones. Unlike their successful predecessors, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones,
who add guitar-based mayhem to the mix, Skavoovie hearkens back to old-school
ska. They deviate from it, however, with a heavy infusion of jazz improvisation
from the horn section, and all of this adds up to a spicy blend that has proven
irresistable. The 10-man unit has won a devoted legion of fans, and the band
is able to fill every club in town, including bigger rooms like the Middle East
Downstairs and the Paradise. Skavoovie has also toured the country numerous
times, developing a strong grassroots following, playing long sets that invariably
turn into sweat fests.
-Ken Capobianco
Skavoovie's mod, mod world Boston-based Skavoovie and the Epitones brought their eclectic mix of ska, big band, swing, rock
and jazz to The Rubb in Ybor City. Despite the surging popularity of ska's third wave - and the
inevitable watering down of the original Jamaican sound - Skavoovie clings to traditional two-tone
roots that made the music style popular in the first place.
Ska is a generally quicker version of reggae that carries the trademark downbeat guitar of keyboard
chords. It originated in Jamaica during the 1950s when Jamaican record producer Clement Dodd asked
his musicians to create a danceable, uniquely Jamaican sound.
Caribbean immigrants brought the sound to Great Britain and rocksteady and reggae evolved from it.
The 10-piece Skavoovie band (featuring bass, guitar, drums, trumpets, saxophones, euphonium and
keyboards) has managed to keep the mostly traditional sound while adding elements of other musical
styles that don't drop the curtain on roots ska.
Fronted by lively singer Ans Purins, dressed in a dapper black tie, white dress shirt and pressed
black suit, Skavoovie had the audience of about 400 people dancin' and boppin' throughout the
hour-and-ten-minute show. With a Sinatra-esque crooning style and ever-cheerful bounce, Purins
kept the show flowing with older material and tunes from their latest release, ripe six months.
For the last five years, Skavoovie has been one of New York City's Moon Ska record labels hottest
acts. And getting signed to Moon Ska is the pinnacle of ska-ness for any band.
Touring the east in support of their latest release (May 1997) "Ripe," Skavoovie has managed to keep
the traditional ska sound intact. Despite the MTV-generated hype of the hybrid punk/rock/ska styles
of now-mainstream acts like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones or No Doubt, Skavoovie is bringing ska
roots to the masses.
After Sarasota's bagpipe-toting opening act Pork Pie Tribe finished pumping up the mix of
skinheads and rude boys at the stagefront, Skavoovie lined the stage and fired up "Aquaman."
The band shook the stage through "Desert Gold," one of their newest tunes and "Wildfire" a
song Purins called a "Western ballad." During "Frog Spirit (off 'Ripe')," bassist Rob Jost took
center stage and soloed as the band formed two lines to the side of him.
The band went through four more tunes made with the traditional/old school ska recipes -
including the new "The Nine Dragons," "Riverboat (from 'Ripe')" and the 45 rmp instrumental
release "Sonic Boom" - before concluding with the perennial ska favorite "Batman Theme."
The mostly older crowd hadn't had enough and neither had hte band. Skavoovie
and the Epitones ended the show with the wacky, up/down of an extended "Nut
Monkey" from "Fat Footin'."
Hernando Today (Brooksville, FL), 1/5/98
TAMPA - One of the United States' most popular traditional ska bands blasted the old Latin quarters
Tuesday.
-Paul Catala
Ripe (Moon Ska NYC) Be it infectious instrumental odes to childhood heroes ("Japanese Robot," "Aquaman"), simmering reggae
and rock-steady ("Latvian Lullaby," "Riverboat"), or the album's highlight, a head-pounding ditty about
the wonderful evils of alcohol ("Drunk"), this album's great all around. Vocalist Ans Purins treats us
to his scatting skills in Duke Ellington's "Bli-Blip," while drummer Benny Herson's burru-style drumming
infects us with "The Plague." The band even has a euphonium player. Before I saw Skavoovie, I had no idea
what a euphonium was. So, not only are Skavoovie a killer band, they're educational too. I'm trying
desperately to be objective and search for something bad to say about the album, but I really can't -
except that I don't know what the hell the lyrics of "Frog Spirit" are talking about. Then again, maybe
I wasn't meant to...
In a year that's seen ska inching its way ever-closer to the mainstream, there's
also been an explosion of new ska albums, and this is the best one so far.
That's that, end of story. I heartily recommend the musical stylings of these
feisty lads, and look forward to seeing them headline the next "Monsters of
Rock" festival.
Lollipop Magazine, September, 1997
Long a fixture on Boston's ska landscape, Skavoovie have finally gotten around to releasing their
second album - and it's all big bucks, and no whammies. Mixed by ska bass master and former Scofflaw
Victor Rice at the infamous Fort Apache Studios, Ripe is packed with the band's swinging,
raucously melodic brand of ska, but with an element that their debut album, Fat Footin',
lacked - maturity. Yes folks, Ripe not only applies to the fruit that the pretty girl on the album
cover is eating, but also to Skavoovie's own transcendence from "merely" a bunch of upstart kids playing
ska to a force to be reckoned with, a band whose talent is nothing short of astonishing.
-Skadude
Unsigned Artists and Regional News
Billboard, 8/23/97
Boston: There has always been a vibrant ska scene in Boston, but
it never has been as bountiful as it is now. Skavoovie & the Epitones have been
at the forefront and now are one of the most popular bands in town. Unlike other
groups that venture into ska-rock, Skavoovie goes back to teh roots. "We would
say that we are improvisational ska," says tenor saxophonist Ben Jaffe. "We
play music that reflects back to the Skatalites and try to add jazz influences
also to make the music as inventive as possible." The 10-member unit was formed
in 1992. In 1995, it put out its first album, "Fat Footin'," on New York-based
Moon Records. So far it has sold 10,000 copies, according to the band. In June,
it released a follow-up, "Ripe," a sweetly produced set of ebullient, uncut
ska. In less than two months, it has sold 4,500 copies, according to the band.
The bad has already taken multiple cross-country tours, and in Boston it has
sold out the high-profile Paradise, as well as smaller clubs like the Middle
East and T.T. the Bear's. "We believe that ska should be joyful dance music,
but we also want to give the audience something with meat and substance. We
play fun music, but we're very serious about what we do," Jaffe adds.
-Ken Capobianco