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Most touring bands don't take a chance of getting injured or catching a cold by hitting the slopes at resort towns. The New Mastersounds are unlike most any other band.
The quartet from Leeds, England, braved extreme conditions last March by attempting to ski at Heavenly Mountain Resort on the morning before a North Shore show. The resort closed when wind approached 100 mph.
“I was trying to ski down but the wind was blowing me back,” said guitarist Eddie Roberts. “I have become an absolute obsessive skier. There is a risk involved but we do like to live dangerously. Play hard and work hard.”
From the very first note, the funk band plays hard, and the audience dances hard. The New Mastersounds have performed at the Crystal Bay Casino and the High Sierra Music Festival. The band debuts at South Lake Tahoe Saturday, headlining a night of music at the Mt. Tallac Brewery, on Eloise Avenue at the “Y” intersection of highways 50 and 89.
The New Mastersounds' strategy for success has been to hit the same towns each year and build up crowds. The band is hugely popular in the United States and Japan.
“That's kind of unheard of in Europe,” Roberts said. “You play a town once and people have already seen you. They say, ‘I've seen them once. I don't want to see them again.' It's a weird mentality in Britain. You go and see something once and, even if it was the best gig in your life, you wouldn't want to actually go and see it again. You'd want to go see something new.
“In America there seems to be this loyalty that builds up. Even if you play three gigs in the same place, people come every night. It's kind of reverse mentality. It's very healthy for a touring band. Every time you come to a town you play for a bigger audience.”
The New Mastersounds have been taken in by the jam band scene, which has appreciated funk and New Orleans-flavored music since the Meters opened for Jerry Garcia. An instrumental band, the New Mastersounds are compared first and foremost with the Meters.
Roberts' guitar tone is very clean and is only occasionally plugged to a wah-wah pedal.
“I wanted to play jazz but I didn't like the role of guitar in a lot of jazz,” Roberts said. “It was all a bit too nice and a bit sedentary. It wasn't until I heard Grant Green when I was about 19. I heard that sound and went, ‘Ohh. That's the sound I've been looking for.' ”
Green was a St. Louis jazz player from Charlie Parker's bebop era. He later became a funk pioneer in the 1960s. Like the New Mastersounds, Green was more popular away from his home country and “across the pond.”
“‘You're never big in your own town,' is the old expression,” Roberts said. “So many musicians tell me, ‘I want to go to Europe, I want to play in England.' I say, ‘Well, I want to play here,' but I'm fully aware an American band will do much better in Europe and a European band will do much better in America. That's just how it is. When you travel, people are a lot more interested in it. The climate's better (in the U.S.). It suits me.”
The DJ scene is huge in Britain, and that's how Roberts and his band mates discovered Green.
“We're definitely influenced by those retro sounds,” he said. “It's like a foot in the past and a foot in the future. We're trying to embrace groove-based musical forms like dance music and things just including that into the sound. Everything that we've listened to that's gone in comes out.”
“Breaks from the Band,” the New Mastersounds' seventh studio album, will be released Aug. 9. It is the band's first to be recorded in America (Sonic Ranch near El Paso, Texas) and, moreover, the first with vocals (sorry to the diehard fans for burying the lead). There will be vocals on eight of the 11 songs. Roberts sings two songs, drummer Simon Allen sings two, and all four — Pete Shand is on bass, Joe Tatton Hammond organ — sing in harmony of four tracks.
“It just seems like a natural progression to try to organize that more and try and give some hooks for people,” Roberts said. “People like to participate when they're watching music if there's a hook they can recognize; they can shout it out.
“We've been doing this tune called ‘Nervous' over the years. On the record, there's a horn section that plays. The audience started shouting out the horn line. People get a bit of a buzz out when they are singing along. It felt like time to do it. We can all sing and can all hold a note. I'm a Welch (native) myself. I was born about 15 miles from Tom Jones. And Shirley Bassey.”
The quartet from Leeds, England, braved extreme conditions last March by attempting to ski at Heavenly Mountain Resort on the morning before a North Shore show. The resort closed when wind approached 100 mph.
“I was trying to ski down but the wind was blowing me back,” said guitarist Eddie Roberts. “I have become an absolute obsessive skier. There is a risk involved but we do like to live dangerously. Play hard and work hard.”
From the very first note, the funk band plays hard, and the audience dances hard. The New Mastersounds have performed at the Crystal Bay Casino and the High Sierra Music Festival. The band debuts at South Lake Tahoe Saturday, headlining a night of music at the Mt. Tallac Brewery, on Eloise Avenue at the “Y” intersection of highways 50 and 89.
The New Mastersounds' strategy for success has been to hit the same towns each year and build up crowds. The band is hugely popular in the United States and Japan.
“That's kind of unheard of in Europe,” Roberts said. “You play a town once and people have already seen you. They say, ‘I've seen them once. I don't want to see them again.' It's a weird mentality in Britain. You go and see something once and, even if it was the best gig in your life, you wouldn't want to actually go and see it again. You'd want to go see something new.
“In America there seems to be this loyalty that builds up. Even if you play three gigs in the same place, people come every night. It's kind of reverse mentality. It's very healthy for a touring band. Every time you come to a town you play for a bigger audience.”
The New Mastersounds have been taken in by the jam band scene, which has appreciated funk and New Orleans-flavored music since the Meters opened for Jerry Garcia. An instrumental band, the New Mastersounds are compared first and foremost with the Meters.
Roberts' guitar tone is very clean and is only occasionally plugged to a wah-wah pedal.
“I wanted to play jazz but I didn't like the role of guitar in a lot of jazz,” Roberts said. “It was all a bit too nice and a bit sedentary. It wasn't until I heard Grant Green when I was about 19. I heard that sound and went, ‘Ohh. That's the sound I've been looking for.' ”
Green was a St. Louis jazz player from Charlie Parker's bebop era. He later became a funk pioneer in the 1960s. Like the New Mastersounds, Green was more popular away from his home country and “across the pond.”
“‘You're never big in your own town,' is the old expression,” Roberts said. “So many musicians tell me, ‘I want to go to Europe, I want to play in England.' I say, ‘Well, I want to play here,' but I'm fully aware an American band will do much better in Europe and a European band will do much better in America. That's just how it is. When you travel, people are a lot more interested in it. The climate's better (in the U.S.). It suits me.”
The DJ scene is huge in Britain, and that's how Roberts and his band mates discovered Green.
“We're definitely influenced by those retro sounds,” he said. “It's like a foot in the past and a foot in the future. We're trying to embrace groove-based musical forms like dance music and things just including that into the sound. Everything that we've listened to that's gone in comes out.”
“Breaks from the Band,” the New Mastersounds' seventh studio album, will be released Aug. 9. It is the band's first to be recorded in America (Sonic Ranch near El Paso, Texas) and, moreover, the first with vocals (sorry to the diehard fans for burying the lead). There will be vocals on eight of the 11 songs. Roberts sings two songs, drummer Simon Allen sings two, and all four — Pete Shand is on bass, Joe Tatton Hammond organ — sing in harmony of four tracks.
“It just seems like a natural progression to try to organize that more and try and give some hooks for people,” Roberts said. “People like to participate when they're watching music if there's a hook they can recognize; they can shout it out.
“We've been doing this tune called ‘Nervous' over the years. On the record, there's a horn section that plays. The audience started shouting out the horn line. People get a bit of a buzz out when they are singing along. It felt like time to do it. We can all sing and can all hold a note. I'm a Welch (native) myself. I was born about 15 miles from Tom Jones. And Shirley Bassey.”
