BAREFOOT, NESBIT & ZHIEM

The Island Hopper: Takin' it home
Three of Marco's favorite musicians release CD this weekend

By Tiffany Yates (Contact)
Thursday, March 16, 2006

Ever go see a really talented musician or band and wish you could take them home with you?

I'm not talking about the talent-attraction quotient, folks, where you see someone who is gifted on stage and you suddenly love them, and want to take them home in an entirely different context from what I mean here.

(There truly is something weirdly magnetic about creative skill, if you are thinking of taking up guitar to get chicks.

Gentlemen, I'm here to tell you it really does work. And, I am assuming it goes the other gender direction too, but you male readers will have to write in and confirm that.)

No, I mean that you are digging the jams so intensely that you want to rekindle the experience.

If you're picking up what I'm putting down ... if you are riding the rail I'm laying here, then you'll be delighted to hear that three of Marco's favorite musicians have created a collaborative CD that's being released this weekend and will be available at all of their gigs.


Barefoot Geno, Ray Nesbit and Ed Ziehm have been coming together for spontaneous jams, usually at Geno's late-night Reflections gigs. All three are unusually talented musicians and all three have the ability to improvise, making them a jam-band trio that can take you all over the musical map.

Barefoot Geno, so dubbed for his playing of the bass pedals while he sings and plays guitar, sans footwear ("It was never a chosen name. It was given to me," he avers.) was the nexus of the grouping.

Nesbit is a friend Geno met when he first came to Southwest Florida in 1990 and has since opened a recording studio with Nezco Productions.

Ziehm is the baby-faced drummer from One Perfect Minute, a top-notch, area alternative and rock band. After meeting Geno in various professional capacities, Ziehm showed up with his drum set at one of Geno's gigs. The two found they worked seamlessly together.

The recording sessions were three evenings of the Reflections gigs where the trio ended up jamming. It happened almost off-the-cuff.

"We changed the strings on our guitars, we gave a few people a call, and then we had fun," Geno said.

The three just laid into a set list that included Geno's originals and covers of artists like the Dead, the Allman Brothers and Tom Petty.

"Eddie never heard half the songs before we played," Geno remembers with a laugh.

But Ziehm is as talented at improvisation as the other two men. He joined right in on the backbeat.

"At 22 years old, he's probably a better musician than both of us together. He's a powerhouse," Geno said.

But the self-effacing Geno is quick with compliments. Of Nesbit, he offers, "Ray makes me look like a complete amateur on guitar."

The resulting CD, culled from all three evenings, is a 53-minute live jam. There are only eight songs included.

Track four alone is a 14-minute free-for-all, a meandering down a musical path that includes an old Grateful Dead tune, Jack-a-Roe, the Phish song Possum, and a sampling of other riffs as well.

Geno has included several of his popular originals — the catchy Puzzle, which is also given a terrific acoustic treatment at album's end, Starting Over, and Taylor's Song.

His musical family is represented as well (Geno's brother is area musician Joerey; his father singer/songwriter Steve Ortiz) in the beautiful Lovers Love, written by Joerey and their father when Geno was a child.

"I am my brother's biggest fan," said Geno. "It's one of my favorite songs. I get more requests for that song — especially from women."

The album is rounded out with Phish song Back on the Train and 16 Days, a high-energy number by Geno's old band, the Naildrivers, who in their late-1990s heyday opened for Dave Matthews, the Black Crowes and Government Mule.

The three are hoping to use the CD as entrée to the music-festival scene, and have already begun submitting it. But they'll also offer it for sale at each of their gigs for $10 to $15. They haven't yet set a firm price.

They'll be debuting it at release parties at Reflections this Sunday and Monday night, beginning around 11 p.m. All three will be jamming together and celebrating the collaborative project.

Meanwhile, their schedule and bios are on www.sonicbids.com/bnz, and the three are ready to start knocking on doors to get attention for their band, which they're calling simply Barefoot, Nesbit and Ziehm.

"We're a jam band with good hooks, good melody lines," Geno said. "Maybe it'll take a little struggling, but we have a really unique act that people take notice of." - Naples Daily