|
Down To The Bone Down To The Bone duo Chris Morgans and Stuart Wade (Photo) originally met during college, but it wasn't until a chance encounter three years later when Chris was driving round near his hometown of Weybridge, that the two became musically involved. "I stopped the car and we spoke about what we were both doing. I was in a successful hip-hop band at the time, while Stuart was more into the soul and jazz side of things. We hit it off again and we were both looking for a new challenge, both wanting to take our music to another direction, so we decided to go in the studio. It was the combination of Stuart' s knowledge of the whole soul/funk sound and my musical/studio background that got the whole thing going" recalls Chris. "We both put together a successful soul/jazz band, but Chris and I wanted to toughen the sound up a little. So we remixed a track that we did, and because of the musical angle we wanted to take - meaning stripping it down and toughening up the beats - we thought of the name Down To The Bone. At the time, we were also going to a club co-run by DJ Simon Dunmoore called 'To The Bone' that played a lot of funky jazz grooves - that was where we felt ourselves definitely going musically." says Stuart. "Stuart would ring everyone up and ask us if we were "coming Down To The Bone tonight?" so it kind of stuck really." Declares Chris. On the strength & success of that remix, Stuart and Chris put out the 'Down To The Bone Grooves Volume 1' EP that featured the masterful 'Staten Island Groove'. Some excellent reviews followed, and the pair sold the 2000 copies they initially pressed. 'DTTB Grooves Vol.2' came soon after and continued its sales pattern. Then became the high demand for new material from both the record buying public and their distributors, so Chris and Stuart set up Internal Bass Records and began work on a DTTB album. On listening to 'From Manhattan To Staten', you hear its definitive American influence. Couple song titles like 'Brooklyn Heights', 'Staten Island Groove', 'Carlito's Way' and with the cover photo, and it becomes apparent that America is where they believe the music produced by Down To The Bone is from. "Our influences fit into two categories really. I grew up on the soul/jazz/funk sound and listened to people like Ramsey Lewis, Sergio Mendez & Brazil 66, Lonnie Liston Smith, Roy Ayers, JB's, Caltjader, Deodato and the Mizell Bros. production sound…the list is endless. All very American sounding and also all of which my parents were listening to. I was also highly influenced by the whole pirate radio scene. I frequently listened to stations like Invicta, Horizon, JFM and LWR and DJ's like Chris Stuart, CJ Carlos, Jazzy M and Gary Kent on a Sunday afternoon. It was those pirate radio stations and DJ's that made we want to somehow get involved in the music scene." says Stuart. Chris adds "Whereas hip-hop was my biggest influence - bands like the Beastie Boys, Run DMC and early LL Cool J material - basically when hip-hop was hip-hop in the UK. Although Stuart and I are from very different musical backgrounds we meet in the middle very easily - musically we're on the same wavelength. Most of the music I listened to was from New York. It all seemed so much more exciting than what was happening here in England. I was always into music, but never found a style that I truly liked until hip-hop came along from the US. At 15 years old I created the break dance crew 'Rock Force Breakers' (based on Rock Steady Crew and The New York City Breakers from New York), which went on to became one of the UK' s top crews, doing shows across the country and Europe. This led onto me doing Graffiti Art, as well as rapping (for a laugh). But after a few friends & I did our 1st demo tape (musically), we were more or less signed instantly, which led to supporting Public Enemy and LL Cool J on the 1987 Def Jam Tour. To cut this long story short, I've learned the ins & outs of the music business the hard way from 1985-1994, but I never look back and want to change anything, because then there would be no DTTB. I love the music we're doing and I love the music business not believing in it." "We don't want to come across as being pretentious. We know we're from the UK, but all of our roots lie in America. We wanted to recreate the excitement that those guys had in their earlier recordings and try and bring that sound up to date. Down To The Bone's aim was to try and inject more energy into the type of jazz music that is so badly stereotyped and give it a much funkier sound." expresses Stuart "We want to enforce that "From Manhattan To Staten" is an American sounding album. We've both said that all our influences and heroes are from the States and a lot of the great American jazz players had a great vibe in the 60's 70's & 80's, but somewhere along the way, I feel they've lost what they had. The sound has been mellowed out with this whole "jazz" easy listening sound. For me, that is not what it is about. It's about a feeling and an emotion within the music and combining it with a good groove - to create the sound we call jazz-GROOVE. We want to let people know that it can still be done and that there are people doing it." "We want to get the jazz/funk scene going again" confirms Chris. Down To The Bone has already finished the follow up to "From Manhattan To Staten" - The Album and the new album has another interesting concept. Chris explains; "The new album is called "The Urban Grooves - Album II". Its theme this time is the idea of our dream record shop. The shop has every track we ever wanted and we see all our favourite labels on the shelves. And when we're looking around in the shop, the tunes that are playing on the in-store sound-system are just superb! "The Urban Grooves" is slightly more musical than "From Manhattan To Staten'" and has twelve tracks on it instead of ten. We want to offer the listener value for money" "We have a bigger pool of talented musicians now at Internal Bass," says Stuart who continues " "The Urban Grooves" features Richard Sadler and Richard Wargent on "Joy Is A Good Groove". Other players on the album include the Brand New Heavies keyboardist Neil Cowley; a guitarist called Bruce Knapp, Miguel our Congo player, Saxophonist Shiltsy (Paul Weimar) who has played on more than half the album, and an engineer called David Tyler who we can't thank enough. All these people are in someway linked with Internal Bass. We're trying to create a pool of musicians whereby they can be seen on other projects. That is another thing that influenced me in the 60's and 70's. I'd buy albums on CTI or Verve and I'd look at the session musicians on the back and they'd all be the same people - It's a family of the same people. That is what Chris and I want to recreate with Internal Bass and Down To The Bone. Also appearing on "The Urban Grooves" is Reuben Wilson with whom we were very lucky to work with." Ben Mynott - BM Media / Blues & Soul Following the success of the "From Manhattan To Staten" album in America, a new live line-up was put together by Brand New Heavies saxophonist Paul 'Shilts' Weimar to enable Down To The Bone to tour extensively both here and across the waters. The line-up put together was impressive to say the least and certainly did the music justice. It included bass-player Paul Turner, drummer Tony Mason, percussionist Satin Singh, sax/flautist Adrian Ravelle, guitarist Tony Remy, keyboardist Neil Angilley and Shilts himself. After two sold out Jazz Cafe dates in London, the gang played the likes of Chicago, Detroit, New York, Phillidelphia, Tampa Bay/St. Petersburg, Washington and CityWalk (Universal Studios) in Florida to very appreciative and large audiences (NY - 5000 people / Detroit 6000 people). We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the below musicians for making it all possible. Down To The Bone Live Line Up:-
More infos:
|
