Little Brother Project

Little Brother Project grows up
By SARA CRESS
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
You won't meet a lot of bands that are as close as the guys in Little Brother Project. Life-changing events will do that to a group.
The Project began in 2003 as a plan to get a club to pay former Bro Sure band mates Coy Boazman and Marc Reczek to practice in a corner, improvising to their hearts' content without the bother of writing songs or being an actual band. Dean's Credit Clothing on a then-torn up Main Street took them up on the idea, and something unexpected happened: Their improvised funk drew a crowd and continued to do so for a year and a half.
The band, which includes vocalist Phyve ("things happen to me in fives," he says), and multi-instrumentalist Conrad Kao, was poised to record an album when events challenged its very existence. First, Boazman learned he needed a heart transplant, which he had in January 2005. The group was dormant while he recovered with the help of his family — and band mates.
When it seemed that Little Brother Project was ready to play again, drummer Daniel Beatty, a National Guardsman, was deployed to Iraq.
"We started to wonder what would happen to the band," Boazman says, "but we've been together for a very long time, and we wanted to keep it going. We auditioned Morris [Montgomery] on drums, and we've had a whole resurgence of what we do. Beatty gets out this October and will be our percussionist at that point."
Last year the band released Live and Well Shaven, a compendium of jams recorded from 2004 shows. It's an enjoyable entree into LBP's music, featuring the dulcet One Prayer More; the pretty, piano-laced Numbered Days; and the jammy soul of Cause and Effect.
"Marc's a big jam-band guy, but he's really the only one," Boazman says. "I love the improv, creating something from nothing, but we're way different from, say, Phish. When we were trying to figure out where we wanted to go with our sound, I brought in Stevie Wonder, Funkadelic and some rock CDs. Marc brought in eight Phish CDs."
"I thrive on improvisation," Reczek says. "I love the awkwardness of 'What am I going to do now?' It pushes me to try to go different directions."
The band is working on its first studio album as Little Brother Project (Bro Sure release one studio album, Urban Ocean) produced by onetime Waylon Jennings guitarist — and Reczek's wife's uncle — Gordon Payne, who wants less of the jammy bits.
"He pulls out an ire in me that comes out positively in the music," Boazman says. "I'm playing with my teeth grit, but when you listen to the tape, it's beautiful."
The approach has been difficult for a band that does in 12 notes what a different band might do in two, but everyone is committed to this slower approach in the studio, rather than releasing more live recordings (The Travis Tapes, Standing O).
"We're trying to capture what we do onstage, with the driving groove and creativity, but be centered around the vocalist, where it used to be centered around Marc's guitar," Boazman says.
As Little Brother Project regains its momentum, playing shows and looking forward to the new album, the band's members shine with an obvious joy for making music and being around each other.
"I get to play with passionate musicians," Kao was says, "I don't care if there's only one person watching, just sharing that passion with other players is good enough for me.” "Even when no one is around, after we've set up, Conrad will say, 'let's just play now,'" Boazman says.
- Houston Chronicle

LBP review by the Houston Press

by John Lomax (Houston Press)

If you're not already stoned -- which, by looking at the clientele,
seems about a 50-50 proposition -- when you walk into a Little
Brother Project show, you'll feel that way after about five minutes.
You don't even have to light up.
Though they're billed as acid jazz, the absence of a DJ, horns and
keyboards gives up the game. "I wouldn't really call it acid jazz,
either," says 26-year-old guitarist Marc Reczek. "That was just our
marketing strategy to get into a club downtown. It's funny, though;
some people say that it's acid jazz, but I don't think it has
anything to do with it. I see it as more of a jam band with no
band."
Reczek, who also plays in the dormant and larger group Bro-Sure,
realized that approaching a downtown schwankienda like Dean's and
offering up their services as a jam band was not likely to succeed.
Thus the acid jazz fib. "What we wanted to do was something where we
could be in a hip atmosphere and improv," he says. "We wanted it to
relate to Bro-Sure, but we also wanted it to be separate. We started
it about six months ago, and we've never had one rehearsal except
for those in that room back there. The bass player and me try to
come up with different ideas every week. It's really caught on
bigger than I expected."
He ain't lyin'. Though the first set drew only about ten people,
Racket walked back by later and saw that Dean's was bustling. What
separates LBP from most jam bands is that they don't play any
covers -- not even as template for a half-hour of noodling-- or even
any songs, as such. What they do is just get up on stage and wing it
for an hour. "Most jam bands -- they'll play three chords and then
the guitar player will take a solo and the keyboardist will take a
solo and that's a jam band," says Reczek. "What we try to do is
meander. We have a piece of paper and there's a set of ideas and
we'll go from one to the other."
Reczek's influences include Phish and to a lesser extent the
Grateful Dead, but also Wes Montgomery and Django Reinhardt. LBP's
ideas are fairly succinct, and they vary the tempos with aplomb.
Grooves move from blues to rock to jazz to funk with punctuation and
snap. They don't drag you through a fog of virtuosity for its own
sake. It may not be acid jazz, but somehow LBP's brand of jam music
works in its posh environs.
As for their music's narcotic effect, Reczek will only say, "I used
to smoke a lot of weed, but I don't really smoke anymore."
Racket thinketh "Whatever." And so did a fan who came out a couple
of weeks ago. "You should have seen this guy who came out last
week," Reczek laughs. "He was getting down. He was like, 'Y'all are
a bunch of potheads!' I was just like, 'Rock on, man.' "Little
Brother Project plays every Wednesday at Dean's, 316 Main, 713-227-
3326.
- Houston Press