3rd Stone Band

Among the national acts rolling out the funk, rock and blues vibes at the Bear Creek Music & Art Festival near Live Oak this weekend is a Gainesville band that won't just be opening for some of the headliners - they'll be playing with them.

The three-day festival at the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park boasts such performers as New Orleans funk-meisters Galactic, acid-jazzers Karl Denson & Tiny Universe, swamp-funksters Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk, South Carolina's Toubab Krewe and England's New Mastersounds.

The big news for Gainesville funk-o-philes, however, is that area genre-busters 3rd Stone will be closing down one of the five stages Friday night with guest keyboardist Bernie Worrell sitting in.

Worrell earned his funk stripes in the trenches of one of the world's best-known funk collectives, George Clinton's Parliament/Funkadelic, where, as Parliament's original keyboardist, he contributed the synth-blasts on such hits as "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)" and "Flash Light."

Worrell also recorded several albums with the Talking Heads, for whom he contributed those hot-skillet, synth-dollops on "Burning Down the House."
Such a pedigree will fit right in with 3rd Stone, which will be performing on the heels of releasing its self-titled, debut CD. Such originals as "Heavy Water" and "Give Me Hope" show the group's penchant for Afro-beat style sounds while others, such as "The Meaning of Life," find an axis somewhere between funk and neo-psychedelia.

So if you head to Bear Creek, by all means catch 3rd Stone with Bernie Worrell closing down the SOS Music Hall Stage on Friday night at 12:30 a.m.

For details on the Bear Creek Music & Art Festival, see the Calendar on page 12 or check out the fest's Web site at www.bearcreekmusicfestival.com.
- Gainesville Sun

Getting things started tonight at the Backstage Lounge is 3rd Stone, the blues, funk and fusion band fresh off of its performance at the Phillips Center for Performing Arts in March with the Original Wailers. The buzz on this band is their 12-year-old guitar player, Anthony Kavouklis, who famously shared the stage with blues legend Buddy Guy in 2006. But this is a great band from top to bottom.

Wester Joseph, 3rd Stone's lead vocalist and guitarist, is a true veteran of the Gainesville music scene and has played with a number of bands to great success. He is an immensely talented player often conjuring Jimi Hendrix during performances while he plays behind his head or with his teeth. He's a lefty too. And the band also has a great rhythm section led by Eli Collins on bass and Sean McGuire on drums. These guys have a lot of game and are a lot of fun to watch live. Any fan of good rock n' roll should make it a point to go see them.
- Gainesville Sun

Call it a homecoming straight out of Hollywood: 10-year-old guitarist gets called out of the audience to jam with a blues master, and returns with his own group to play the same theater two years later, this time with a group of reggae heavyweights — and he's still only 12.

That in a nutshell is the story of Anthony Kavouklis, the Micanopy guitar prodigy who wowed a Phillips Center crowd in June 2006 when he joined Buddy Guy onstage for a blistering version of "Voodoo Chile."

Fast forward to 2009 — Friday night, to be precise — when Anthony's own group, 3rd Stone, will open a free show at the Phillips Center headlined by The Original Wailers, marking his first appearance onstage there since that night a few years ago.

And what a difference a few years make: Since that famous episode with Guy, Anthony and band have played countless shows around the area, opening for Robin Trower in Ft. Pierce last year, and touring with Toubab Krewe and DubConcious earlier this year.

And just last month, Anthony joined Guy onstage a second time (at the UCF Arena in Orlando) to play — and visually answer the question posed by — the song "Who's Gonna Fill Those Shoes."

No wonder June 2006 will seem like an eternity ago when Anthony plugs in on Friday.

"It really feels as though it's the first time I've played there because it seems like it was so long ago," Anthony says.

"It's exciting because it's the biggest venue (so far) that our band has played, and we're looking forward to it very much. One thing that I can say is that I'm a different guitar player than the first time I played there — before I was mainly just a blues guitar player, but since then I've really been focusing on different genres, especially Afrobeat and reggae."

That should fit in with 3rd Stone's opening set for The Original Wailers, which features such former bandmates of Bob Marley's as guitarist Al Anderson and singer Junior Marvin. The free concert starts at 8 p.m.
- Gainesville Sun

This southern reggae-funk band spins afro-beat-inflected polyrhythmic jams like they were born doing it. In 2006, then-10-year-old guitarist Anthony Kavouklis made his impromptu stage debut with blues legend Buddy Guy to much acclaim. His abilities attracted the most talented local musicians around and, from then on, 3rd Stone Band's amazing improvisational abilities have continued to morph into a true creative force. "Give Me Hope", a song about personal freedoms, is driven by afro-beat percussion and group vocals that do just what the song's title asks. It's not everyday you come across a musical group with such a positive message behind it. Check out their self-titled debut, which dropped in November 2009. - SPIN Earth

A mix of diverse background and experience, 3rd Stone mixes rock, afro-beat, reggae and funk rhythms on a potent first release. Wester Joseph's perfectly weathered vocals drive a band that has several different gears to navigate, and while many bands with a penchant for jamming do not translate well onto studio records, the ethnic rhythms infused with the granola-fed melodies make for a solid first release from this Gainesville, Florida based group. And while having Anthony Kavouklis, a clean faced young guitar virtuoso with a history of having played on stage with Buddy Guy? makes for a good story, this band has sound experience that belie their lead guitarist's assumed years.

This is a group sounds like one that is the sum of all it's members, and Give Me Hope is a standout track. The foundation of this disc is in the beats and driving motion of the band itself, tasteful, tuneful and with the ability to rock if need be.
- REAX Music Mag

WHY 3RD STONE SAVES THE MUSICAL PLANET
June 14, 2010 by gainesville365

Today is double-post Monday. I didn’t want my interest in the oil spill to eclipse my usual Monday post about the Free Fridays concert, which this week featured local band 3rd Stone.

I’d seen 3rd Stone once before, at a party where the acoustics did a great disservice to the band. I’m on the band’s Facebook list, and I told singer Quintina Crawford that I’d never seen a band use social media as well as 3rd Stone does. I admire marketing machinery like this. It makes the rest of us look like slouches and, as Quintina told me, the band is dedicated to networking.

That network turned out in force at the Bo Diddley Plaza despite a coming electrical storm that had the band deciding not to take a break but to play right through in case the show had to be stopped earlier than usual. With the addition of bongo player Austin Collins, the band played a two-hour set that competed with the lightning in terms of electricity.

It’s almost hackneyed to call a band “timeless,” but this is exactly the right descriptor for 3rd Stone’s music. Within the musical collective are power funk, reggae, soul, jazz, blues, World beat that join together to sound as if it is something one might have heard at Woodstock (Richie Havens) or at First Avenue (Prince) with a bit of the early psychedelic experiments of Jefferson Airplane and New Wave in the form of Brooklyn’s The Shirts, whose lead singer Annie Golden came to mind as I listened to Quintina Crawford’s elastic, expansive vocal range. That voice rumbles in the lower depths and rockets in the head; another comparison is to the great Merry Clayton.

3rd Stone piles rhythms and inventions one atop another with a driving, relentless force. As soon as you think a song has reached its peak, it keeps going, but then it subsides, suspends, and storms forward anew. Some directions are foreshortened and others are stretched into infinity towards an address that no musical GPS could decode. The band is writing some great material that seems as if it enters the listener’s bloodstream and becomes one with the body, causing it to move without being commanded to move.

The band formed around a very young (age 10) virtuouso guitarist/keyboardist back in 2006 and took off from there with an ensemble of the type of musician most musicians wish they could be, but aren’t. Where do these people come from? If this sounds as if it might be a case of too many talented cooks spoiling the gumbo, it isn’t. 3rd Stone is a unified ensemble that seems free from competitiveness. Each member shines singly and as part of the larger whole as they deconstruct and rebuild musical genres. Rhythms acquire a texture that seems to change shape before your eyes, lending the show a visual element beyond mere performance. They are without a doubt the most visceral band I’ve seen in a long time, and I wonder how and where they get their energy. This stems in part from their set’s being like an extended, joyful jam to which the public is invited, but that jam is a precise, controlled one that only appears loose the longer one gets lost in it.

Vocalist/guitarist Wester Joseph both looks and sounds like a classic; he’s built like a guitar string and he sounds as if the Gods gave him the same groove Hendrix had, that same ability to have the body become the seventh string of an electric guitar. Teen virtuoso Anthony Kavouklis, around whose immense talents the band formed, has the same mystical quality except that it seems to be coming from his mind, as if he and a guitar share the same brain.

The rhythm section of Eli Collins, Jose Rosado, and Sean Patrick McGuire (with Austin Collins sitting in) is that part of the band that urges, drives, and compels. As a unit, they know when to attack and when to soft-brush in a form of musical art much akin to painting, rendering beat in earthy tonal particulars.

Lyrically, 3rd Stone seems committed to positive messaging. Or perhaps I should say positive meaning, conveyed through deceptively simple words attached to complex melodies. I almost feel as if they are superheroes who can save the musical planet, a thought that was cemented by their stunning encore. They’ve at least saved me from thinking we were in a period of musical crisis. These kids won’t be local for long and I urge you to visit the band’s Web site and download their album now. Right now.
- Gainesville365

..."The late night continued with 3rd Stone who really blew me away. This Afro-beat, rock’n, reggae funk band was on fire, blending a fusion of world beats with downright righteous lyrics. 3rd Stone is (Wester Joseph-Guitar/Vocals, Anthony Kavouklis - Guitar, Eli Collins - Bass, Quintina Crawford - Vocals/Percussion, Sean McGuire - Drums, and Jose Rosado - Vocals/Percussion.) It was unbelievable to hear that Anthony Kavouklis playing lead guitar was only 13 years old, wow! Playing like a seasoned veteran, I found myself in awe with his performance." - Leeway's Home Grown Music Network

When 10-year-old Anthony Kavouklis of Micanopy stepped onto the Phillips Center stage to trade guitar licks with blues legend Buddy Guy, he was an unknown to most of those who came to enjoy a night of music. By the time he finished jamming on "Voodoo Child," he was the answer to the most asked question in the lobby, "Who was that kid?"

Guy, a master of the blues guitar and a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, wowed the crowd last Thursday and brought the concert to his fans, playing as he strolled the aisle of the University of Florida's Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. But when he returned to the stage he had some company, a young boy wearing blue jeans, a red T-shirt and a hair style older music fans might describe as early Beatles. And once on stage Guy handed the young man his signature polka-dot guitar and they began to play.
"I think Buddy was feeling him out to see if he could keep up with him, and he could, he was matching him lick for lick," said David Word, who attended the concert with friends.
Michael Blachly, director of performing arts at UF, said the boy's appearance wasn't planned.
"We thought Buddy Guy had planted him, Buddy Guy thought we had planted him," Blachly said.
But nobody had planted 10-year-old Anthony Kavouklis. He was enjoying the concert with his mom Leigh, dad Pete and sister Kalli from an aisle seat in the second row. And when Guy began his stroll up the aisle, Leigh shouted out that her son could play guitar. And when Buddy stooped to ask, "Can you play?" Anthony replied with a confident, "Yep," and soon he got his shot to back up his claim.
While mom had volunteered, seeing it happen, she admitted, was a bit scary.
"I was worried he would freeze up or get really nervous," she said.
But it's not like it was Anthony's first time on stage. After all, he had played for 20 people at the Micanopy Area Cooperative School talent show a couple of years ago. And the now-fifth grader has jammed on Wednesdays at Tim & Terry's Music & Cafe, even took the stage with Terraplane in a downtown concert. But this was bigger, much bigger.
"It was weird, I wasn't nervous at all when I played with Buddy Guy," Anthony said.
The family lives in a large comfortable two-story home near Micanopy. It's light blue in color, but hardly the house of blues. Out back are a few goats and horses, and the cackle of chickens welcomes visitors. The driveway is occupied with a skateboard ramp, there's a go-cart and small motorcycle under a nearby shed and a small tree house beckons.
Anthony's room, however, is wall to wall guitars. There's a guitar rug, guitars leaning in the corner and an autographed picture of Bo Diddley on one wall. The other wall is decorated with a purple, black and yellow poster of Jimi Hendrix that Anthony drew himself. It hangs next to a photo of a younger version of Anthony standing next to guitarist Derek Trucks, who started his career as a child blues-playing prodigy, and offered Anthony advice: "Just stick with it, don't give up."
Anthony's favorites include Hendrix, Eric Clapton, BB King and Led Zeppelin. And it could be argued that music has a six-string link to his genes since Ronnie and Johnny VanZant, who powered Lynyrd Skynyrd and 38 Special, are distant relatives. But why the blues? Anthony will tell you, frankly, he doesn't know why he likes them so much. But his mom is happy to share the moment it started.
Leigh plays piano, but says Anthony didn't show much interest in playing music when he was a little boy. But on one family vacation to North Carolina, when Anthony was about six, they popped a newly-purchased Stevie Ray Vaughan CD into the player for a little traveling music.
"It was like a light bulb went off in his head," she said, with a nod to Anthony, who was quietly picking a few Hendrix and Zeppelin riffs on his unplugged black Fender Squire. "He wouldn't let us listen to anything else the rest of the trip."
And while Anthony doesn't remember saying it, his folks clearly do. After hearing that CD, Leigh recalled Anthony saying, "I could do that."
And over the last three and half years he's been working at doing just that. Leigh says they bought Anthony an electric guitar and amplifier, and it quickly became evident that for the family to survive the noise, he needed lessons. He's now studying with Richy Stano.
"Anthony has a lot of natural ability. He can do things you can't teach people," Stano said. "He needs to take that God-given talent and really work at it, and he'll continue to grow beyond his natural ability."
Stano attended the concert Thursday and wasn't surprised at his student's performance or the crowd's reaction.
After the initial trading of licks, Guy and Anthony swapped guitars. The strap was way too long, but it was all set and ready to go. Anthony took off on an extended jam on Jimi Hendrix' "Voodoo Child," and the crowd jumped on for the ride.
"He let the kid go to it," said Word, who attended with friend Steve Cloutier.
Cloutier said he and Word speculated on whether it had all been pre-planned, but he'd seen Anthony stand up as Guy went by and saw the brief exchange that didn't look staged.
"You got the feeling this wasn't a set-up, this was genuine," Cloutier said. "He got the wa-wa pedal going and everything."
Jean Wonser from Gilchrist County was equally impressed.
"He did so well the friend who was with me thought it was rehearsed," Wonser said, adding that she also had a few clues that wasn't the case.
Wonser said the too-long guitar strap was a visual tip that this was a jam, not a plan. Also prior to launching into the tune, she heard Guy ask Anthony what key he wanted to play in, a detail that would have been worked out prior to the show if it had been a packaged surprise.
"It knocked us all out, everybody," says Blachly, who was watching from back stage. "He was just putting the notes into space. It was one those things that when it happens, it is just magic."
Word noticed that Anthony apparently made a fan out of Guy, too.
"When he (Guy) was on the stage, he had this huge grin on his face watching this kid play. You could tell he was enjoying it too," Word said.
And the crowd showed its approval.
"He got a standing ovation. The whole house stood up, it was a lot of fun," Word said.
With the spotlight in his eyes, Anthony said he couldn't see much of the crowd. But after the concert he had one man ask if he needed an agent, and he signed about 10 autographs. And while he's yet to do a play-for-pay gig, Leigh thinks those may not be too far off. For now, she has quite a musical memory.
"I can't say I've ever heard him play any better," she said. "It was amazing." - Blues Matters, online magazine

Last year when 10-year-old Anthony Kavouklis stepped on stage with blues legend Buddy Guy at the Phillips Center, few people outside of his family or his classmates at Micanopy Area Cooperative School knew who he was. And when he stepped off the stage after delivering a blistering rendition of Jimi Hendrix' "Voodoo Child" that brought the house down, he was the talk of the town.

Well, a year later, he's still making music while making the transition from solo star and one-night wonder to team player as a member of the band 3rd Stone. The group will be performing at tonight's free Let's Go Downtown concert along with Used Blues.
Over the past year he's gone through some changes. He's now 5-feet-5, a good six inches taller, and 20 pounds heavier, according to his mom Leigh Kavouklis.

"Something happened to him over the past year," she says, glancing over at the larger version of her son, as he waited outside of Lillian's for a chance on stage during Monday's regular Jam Night.

"I can look him in the eye now when the solos come up," says Wester Joseph, guitarist, singer and songwriter with the group.

The growth spurt also means that the three-quarters size guitar he was most comfortable with a year ago is gathering dust. He now straps on a full-sized Fender Stratocaster that sports a colorful and unusual paint job. Kavouklis calls it the "Splattercaster."

The group is also something new since a year ago.

"I'd played with bands before, but not officially," Kavouklis says, explaining that by invitation he'd sit in for a song or two with different acts.

That changed shortly after the Buddy Guy concert and 3rd Stone, a name inspired by the Hendrix tune "Third Stone From the Sun," was born. Right-handed Kavouklis and left-handed Joseph dual six strings out front, Eli Collins thunders on bass, and Steve Holland pounds out the beat on drums.

"He's got natural talent, it just needs to be molded," Joseph says. "If you teach guys that young how to do something, they're going to take it to the 10th power."

Joseph says his young bandmate is gaining a better grasp of the intangibles. Pat Jarnagin oversees the Monday jam of electric rock and blues at Lillian's. On Monday players arrive with guitars in hand, and Jarnagin forms them into impromptu groups on stage. That's what he did with Kavouklis a couple years ago when he showed up with his mom and dad.

"His confidence has gotten a lot better," says Jarnagin, who has watched him develop. "He's starting to listen to the other players and play off of that."

Kavouklis is definitely the kid, but with his growth spurt and the glare of stage lights, it's not as noticeable now. Joseph, 30, is a sound engineer for a TV production company who also teaches guitar after school at the Reichert House. Collins, 29, has his own property maintenance company, while Holland, 26, works at Canoe Outpost by day and is a musician by night. By contrast, Kavouklis began his summer shooting hoops at a Billy Donovan basketball camp, and his immediate career aspirations are finding an opening for sixth grade at P.K. Yonge.

When 3rd Stone takes the stage, the four form a cohesive unit. It's hard-driving electric rock and blues, and the influence of Hendrix extends well beyond the group's name and the wardrobe of Collins and Kavouklis, who arrive independently sporting black Hendrix T-shirts. There's enough energy to peel paint from the walls. The guitars scream, cry and wail, and the heartbeat of bass and drums penetrates the building and out onto the bricks of SE 1st Street.

Kavouklis is still shy of the microphone. He says one day he may have to sing, but that day hasn't arrived yet. Joseph handles the vocals, showing a knack for alternating between hard blues and soulful.

But on guitar, the junior band member eagerly trades licks with his older musical pals, neither hogging the stage nor hiding in the shadows. At one point he tilts the "Splattercaster" over his shoulders and plays behind his head, while Joseph turns his front teeth into guitar picks and puts a bite into a counter jam.

Asked about his favorite tune to play, Kavouklis doesn't hesitate - "Machine Gun," another song from Hendrix. It was written for a Vietnam era audience, and Joseph says it is a good fit today with what's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. As for the band's best tune, that question is reason for thought and a chuckle.

"It's a jam, it doesn't even have a name yet. We've been playing it about a year," Joseph says.

What's it like sharing the stage with a kid who sips sodas between sets and arrives with his folks? Drummer Holland calls it "awesome." Bass player Collins says "it's inspiring." Collins and Kavouklis go way back, or at least "way back" for an 11-year-old. He met the Kavouklis family more than five years ago at the Hoggetowne Medieval Faire, and reconnected with Anthony two years ago at a jam night at Tim & Terry's, and has seen him grow up musically and physically. Joseph says Anthony has no trouble keeping up with the big boys.

"He's ready to rock," Joseph says.

- The Gainesville Sun

British guitarist Robin Trower may be best known for "Day of the Eagle," the blistering neo-guitar anthem that had the axeman scaling airwaves of the ’70s nearly as high as the American he was often compared to, Jimi Hendrix.

Two weeks ago in Fort Pierce, it was a young American — the 11-year-old, Micanopy guitar whiz Anthony Kavouklis — who soared like a eagle when he and his band 3rd Stone opened for Trower at the Sunrise Theatre.

It was another notch on the six-string belt for young Anthony, who first caused eyes to widen and mouths to gape when he jammed — onstage at the Phillips Center — with none other than Buddy Guy at age 10.

That was special enough, of course, because Anthony was invited to jam with Guy — last of Chess Records’ Mississippi Delta masters.

But the Trower gig on Jan. 16 has its own special sizzle: this time Anthony and band plugged in as fellow professionals, rock-and-blues colleagues who contributed to the bill just as a major-label act would.

"It was definitely a great gig and we're hoping that that will open up some opportunities for us," Anthony says.

"The crowd just loved them from the minute they started playing until the end," adds Anthony's dad, Pete Kavouklis. "They literally were all over him right after they played."

Another chance for local audiences to catch the band comes Friday — when 3rd Stone opens for Atlanta rocker Col. Bruce Hampton & The Quark Alliance at the Side Bar.

The Trower gig was the biggest so far for 3rd Stone, which formed in summer 2006 and also features singer/guitarist Wester Joseph, bassist Eli Collins and drummer Steve Holland.

But 3rd Stone is also jazzed to open for Hampton, who's built a reputation as an accomplished Southern rocker.

Along with an average two hours a day spent in music class at Hoggetown Middle School, Anthony's school of guitar knocks includes listening to guitar masters since he began playing guitar at age 5.

He was 5, in fact, when he first heard Stevie Ray Vaughan. And the rest is history, at least as far as North Florida is concerned.

"He literally told us ‘I could do that’ ” Pete Kavouklis says about Anthony's instant reaction.

Plenty of folks know that now, though. Just ask Buddy Guy ... or Robin Trower.

- The Gainesville Sun

By Dante Lima


Published: Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 11:55 a.m.
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It's been a long time coming for 3rd Stone's first full-length album, but on Saturday at Common Grounds they'll be releasing it to the public with a live show to back it up.

During the last few years, the band has been playing gigs at various venues and making their way into festivals like the Real Big Deal, Farm To Family and, most recently, The Bear Creek Music Festival at the Suwanee Music Park in Live Oak. Now that the album is out, they'll have more ammunition to fire at Gainesville's music community and a real product to help spread the word.

The self-titled album, which contains a nice, neat 10 songs, spans the typical range for the band, blues, soul, funk and reggae, with frequent mixes of any of those two genres. What really stands out from the opening track, "Give Me Hope," is the undeniable rhythmic prowess of the group. For a band featuring two fantastic guitar players in Wester Joseph and Anthony Kavouklis, all the musical focus is on the rhythm, which shows me they have a good sense that jams usually don't translate well to the recording studio. I was expecting a little more solo work, truthfully, to be bombarded with guitar solos and it didn't come to pass, which allowed me to dig in to the astounding bass and drum work.

With guitars present but not overpowering, the textured percussion really shines on the record, especially on tracks like "Guerra Guerra." Jose Rosado's hand percussion can sometimes get drowned out by all the electric instruments during live shows, but on the recordings you can hear him clearly and he really brings out all the subtleties of 3rd Stone's Caribbean influences.
Overall, I would like to see 3rd Stone break out of the reggae mold a little bit, mainly because I feel like they get trapped in generic territory. Their chops for the art form are superb, but to me the band has more originality when they're exploring more bluesy, funky personalities, exemplified by the track "Testify." Testify features an infectious, Steve Cropper-like guitar rhythm, vocals in choral gospel delivery and of course, driving percussion and bass. It's the best song on the record, both musically and lyrically.

If the band continues to try and innovate in areas outside of reggae they certainly have the musical talent to make a strong push forward. Reggae, like the blues, is a difficult art form to revolutionize or make original because of the ancestry of the music. After a while, even the most-successful blues guitar player is handicapped if he can't break from a basic shuffle, and even the most-talented reggae band is a slave to upstrokes and a one-drop. I know 3rd Stone won't become that band, because they are more forwarding thinking and innovative than that. And I know this band has a bright future ahead in this town. Doors open Saturday at 9 p.m.

- The Gainesville Sun