bRb was honored to play at one of the great Southern California musical venues last night, Saint Rocke in Hermosa Beach, opening for an amazing new band, Royal Southern Brotherhood. I say new band, but RSB is jam packed full of some of the best legendary talent in the industry including Cyril Neville, Devon Allman, Mike Zito and, our new best friend to the band, Yonrico Scott on drums. We were fortunate enough to hang with Yonrico for awhile in between sets and there is not a nicer human being in the industry today! Plus, god-damn!, that dude can play!! For all you drummers out there, being able to see our drummer, Brian “Bam Bam” Jones and Yonrico Scott on the same bill would have been heaven for you.
bRb gets tighter and tighter with every show and, everywhere we play, people seem to gravitate to the band’s sound. The band was thrilled to have an amazing vocalist sitting in last night from Abilene, Texas, Kirk House, who took the band to a whole new level. Highlights included one of the original tunes off of our brand new EP, Meant To Say and the great Derek Trucks tune, Midnight in Harlem. Special thanks to the guy wearing the Duane Allman t-shirt who actually came up after the show to compliment my slide playing!
On a related note, we are currently taking pre-orders for our brand new EP, One Moment. Go to our store page and pre-order your copy today! And don’t forget to come on out and support the band at our next show, May 27th at The Coach House! Tickets still available!
There probably isn’t a musician alive who wouldn’t tell you that the most fun part of the whole musical journey is playing live. If you’re given a 30 minute set, you want to play 45 minutes. If you get a 1 hour set, you want to play 2 hours. When the band is completely in the pocket, you could play all night. It’s where all the inspiration, creativity and late night rehearsals come together and, hopefully, result in a memorable experience for the audience. For bands like bRb, when you’re lucky enough to play with a group of musicians who all seem to just naturally click, those live shows can result in some pretty special, of sometimes unscripted, moments.
And while there’s no doubt that the band is still refining, experimenting and retweaking the music, the past few shows have pulled a sound out of this band that, if we do say so ourselves, is becoming something we’re all very proud of.
More shows are being added to the calendar each week and we look forward to seeing you there!
So, as usual, the band is proceeding at a blistering snails place wrapping up our first EP, One Moment. We’re all feeling pretty good about the music and think it’s a really cool representation of what this band sounds like. We’ve mixed in a few new originals, One Moment, Meant To Say and Ragged Old Woman, with a couple of fantastic arrangements of some classics. One of our favorite R&B/Gospel singers was Marvin Sease who,sadly, recently passed on. Marvin left some seriously fun music behind and we were thrilled to pull out a tune from his catalog called Quiet As It’s Kept. If you have half as much fun listening to our take on this as we had recording it ( especially Shawn), we’ll be happy!
Howlin’ Wolf probably needs no introduction to any blues listener and we pulled the timeless classic, Meet Me In The Bottom, from the pile of hits and put our take on it. If that doesn’t get you up and moving, check your pulse. Stay tuned for more details on the release of our first effort ( looking at Feb 15) and upcoming show dates.
I spent the last 4 days in Nashville, TN attending one of the truly great dobro workshops in the world. This brings together some of the best dobro players out there under the guidance of Rob Ickes. If you don’t know who Rob is you are missing out on one of the finest musicians on the American music scene today. If you don’t know what a dobro is then, man, I just feel bad for you! But, it’s never too late for you to learn. Now, if you want to dig into this instrument but fall under that urban fear of bluegrass; no worries. I would recommend checking out one of Rob Ickes later CD’s called Road Song which has some killer jazz & blues interpretations using this instrument. For those of you willing to expand your horizions even more check out Jerry Douglas’s CD, The Best Kept Secret, which features, among other great musicians, the great slide guitar player, Derek Trucks on the opening track!
bRb is back in the studio this Saturday working on a new track. Wouldn’t be surprised if some dobro found its way into this CD at some point!
Well, well, here we are. Finally! We’d like to welcome you to the new website for The Brian Rogers Band. bRb is finally up and running and focused on writing and recording some great tunes as well as getting out live at a watering hole or festival near you. Once you get to know us, you’ll realize that, while we may not seem to be in a rush, we are, at least, dedicated musicians who want to share good music with y’all ( actually, none of us are from the south but we really like saying “y’all a lot).
We encourage everybody to leave comments, ask questions, point out what you like and don’t like about anything including the band, today’s music, your favorite concert venue, whatever. We’ll keep you up-to-date on all the members of bRb, what we’re up to, new music, our random thoughts and what Shawn talked about at the last band rehearsal.
Thanks for stopping by – y’all!
