Talk about a homecoming.
Drummer Jonathan Priest visits Tampa bay this weekend, but it's not just to drop in on Pop and catch up with pals at The Hub. He has three gigs on Friday night and one on Saturday — all of them, thankfully, under the same roof at Yeoman's Road Pub on Davis Islands.
The big night is Friday, when he mans the kit with three bands he helped found or establish in the Bay area: the ska/reggae ensemble Rocksteady@8; Infinite Groove Orchestra, a space-funk jazz outfit; and the marquee event, the reunion of Ghetto Love Sugar, a jam-jazz quartet that burned brightly for less than two years early in the decade. Bassist Philip Booth, keyboardist/EFX guy Raulton Reichel and guitarist Joel Lisi — all original members — round out the unit.
It should be a freewheeling night with lots of movable parts, as the musicians in each of the bands are friends and collaborators. Expect robust jamming. For the capper on Saturday, Priest will join in on the CD Release Party for singer/songwriter Dan Kincaid's The Walk Within.
Priest is in his second year of a four-year program in Chinese medicine at a school in Boone, N.C. His studies have prevented him from gigging heavily. Does he find his concentrated performance schedule in Tampa a bit daunting? "It's not work for me at all," Priest says by phone from North Carolina. "It's going to be a treat. I'm not worried about stamina. I've been doing tai chi through my school. I'm a lot healthier than I've been in years."
The drummer has been called multi-stylistic and pancultural for his ability to provide percussion in a variety of musical settings. In Carolina, he's currently part of an Afrobeat group and, of all things, a bluegrass band. His eclectic tendencies started early on.
"I backed blues artists as a young teenager," he says. "I had to play from the seat of my pants, respond to the emotional dynamic of the song. I wasn't afraid to sit in, and a lot comes out of that. I worked with [blues singer/guitarist] James Peterson — he would never keep the same structure to any of his songs, so I had to be totally alert.
"That experience helped me with every project I did beyond that, gave me the confidence to respond from my heart to whatever stimulus is around me. As a music lover, I listened to so many different styles from around the world and historic periods of American music. I think with that vocabulary I'm not afraid to take on new challenges."
It hasn't just been a matter of being musically inquisitive and a sponge for new stylistic opportunities. Priest has logged countless woodshed hours. "There's a study and practice regimen," he explains. "You have to develop a core level of dexterity to be able to flow properly. I never went to music school, but I studied with various teachers. The single most effective thing for me was to immerse myself in each style. When I first started with Rocksteady, I already liked reggae and Jamaican music, but I knew I had the project in the works so I dug as deep as I could to find out who the best drummers in that realm were and why they sounded so good. Then I assimilated it into what my unique voice is."
Ghetto Love Sugar likely provided Priest with the most wide-ranging opportunity to shape his own rhythmic concept. The band, while a pretty funky unit, was not tethered to a genre.
"During that time period we were all listening to funky stuff and we were resonating in the jam-band arena," Priest says. "I was also studying tabla and Indian music, so a lot of my ideas alternated between keeping a danceable rhythm and a more open-ended approach, letting the music breathe without a rhythmic steadiness. There would be moments where I realized, 'I don't have to keep time here,' and used rhythmic concepts that I learned from my tabla teacher."
Ghetto Love Sugar first scored a regular Thursday night gig at King Corona Cigars in Ybor City, then moved it to Yeoman's Road. The band was able to develop a strong and intuitive connection on stage rather than in the rehearsal studio.
Seven years later, bassist Booth expects "the chemistry to pick right up. It helps that all of us have continued to be involved in musical projects. We've all been listening to recordings of the [old] performances — some of our arrangements wound up being somewhat intricate."
GLS forged their interactivity on small stages, the close quarters enhancing communication. Then they scored a slot on the Clearwater Jazz Holiday. CL staffer Wayne Garcia, who booked the CJH acts at the time, called GLS' set "the single most out there set I ever saw at the festival."
Priests recalls the gig with a chuckle. "On that stage, there was a real wide distance between the players," he says. "And it created a dynamic that was not favorable to what we do. I was somewhat disappointed by the end result."
Garcia puts it differently: "People were flocking to get corndogs. I think I congratulated them for that."
On Friday, Ghetto Love Sugar will be squeezed into the stage-less corner of Yeoman's, a good thing.
This article appears in May 6-12, 2009.