Brian Sharpe & The Associates are an Indie-Folk band from Chicago made up of four multi-instrumentalist songwriters with vastly different musical backgrounds but one singular focus: to make challenging, well crafted original music that’s not limited by a genre or a “sound.” It’s hardly uncommon to see them go from a dreamy jazz standard into a multi-key, multi-time signature prog-folk epic, into an Irish-drinking-song interpretation of a New Order tune into a straight up pop-rock anthem in one set with a different vocalist for each song. The band trades instruments and lead vocals like baseball cards and while they’re fronted by Chicago singer/songwriter and former solo artist, Brian Sharpe, it’s in name only. This is very much a collective musical Association.
In 2007 the Illinois Entertainer wrote: "If John Hiatt, Shawn Mullins, and Jeff Buckley morphed their voices together, it would sound something like Brian Sharpe."
Coming off of a seven year solo career that took him on tour to venues in LA (Viper Room, House of Blues) to New York (Pianos NYC, Acoustic Long Island) and back to Chicago (Martyrs, House of Blues) as well as writing for and performing in film and theatre, Sharpe decided to create a group of friends and musicians to collaborate and challenge each other and simply create great music.
Sharpe found vocalist Sarah Jane Goldstein (The Del Moroccos, Derek Nelson & The Musicians) for vocals and percussion, jazz-trained Drew Pompano (Square, The Circle) for guitar and multi-instrumentalist Brian McKnight (The Baker Street Irregulars) to play the electric bass. But those roles are merely penciled in.
“We tend to pick up whatever is right for the song,” says Sharpe. “If it feels better for me to play mandolin and Sarah to take lead and play the squeezebox on a tune and Brian to play guitar and Drew to play vibra-slap, then we just do. It’s a very musical-chairs way of being a band. But it keeps it interesting for us and the audience, I think. It’s keeps us all on our toes.”
Having grown up in four different regions of the country, each member of BS&TA brings a different musical influence to the collaboration. In the Pacific Northwest, Sarah grew up on local flavors of artists like Built to Spill, Modest Mouse and Neko Case as well as a love for The Beach Boys, Mason Jennings and Nina Simone. From the opposite corner of the country, Drew developed an enthusiasm for New England jam band improvisation that informed his assimilation into jazz and the likes of Jim Hall, Sonny Rollins and Charles Mingus. Raised in Ohio in the 70s and 80s Brian McKnight’s musical foundations come from Dylan, The Band, The Beatles and Elvis Costello. Sharpe was raised in Germany in the 80s, Northern California in the 90s and by the time he got to Chicago found himself immersed in the rise of 90s indie singer/songwriters like Peter Mulvey, Willy Porter and Bob Schneider as well as legends like Jeff Buckley, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits.
The majority of a BS&TA set is built from songs penned by Sharpe but those lines blur more and more everyday as all four voices begin to speak more and more as one. It’s an association of words and of music and appreciation and respect and the result is an exciting and unrestricted experience for an audience searching for something new in a music scene filled with recycled and over-defined styles. Brian Sharpe & The Associates are inspired by each other and the music that feeds them. They’re ready to inspire you.
BS&TA is currently releasing a steady stream of digital singles, the latest of which is a gritty lo-fi interpretation of New Orleans funk legend, Jon Cleary’s ‘Agent 00 Funk.’ It’s available for download from all major online music retailers and free streaming online at:
www.briansharpeassociates.bandcamp.com.
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