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The Hot Java Band CD was recorded "live in the studio" at Audacity Recording in Hollywood Florida. While Audacity has "bleeding edge" technology, the band decided to use techniques that go back to early recording studios. The entire band entered the sound room and gathered around one main mike. No click track was used, many of the arrangements were made minutes before the recording. This gives the CD a sound close to how the band sounds in the clubs and pubs of Southeast Florida. The Hot Java Band are:
Bill Gearhiser plays piano, bass, percussion, saxophone, and stereo. His favorites are ragtime and jazz piano, classical double bass, and bluegrass bass. A student of Lucille Graham, he has performed with Eugene Fodor, Victor Borge, Lorin Hollander, Gary Grafman, Pepe Romero, and Doc Severinsen, among others. He considers the most fun, though, to be playing bass with his buddies in the Hot Java Band. A devoted non-singer, Bill is "the quiet one in the back" and probably enjoys listening to the music more than most of the audience does.
Ed Horowitz on fiddle and mandolin. Ed studied Gypsy violin in Hungary, rode the Grand Ol' Opry tour bus, and worked the streets and clubs of New Orleans before he found fishing in the Florida Keys.
John Jay Martyn (also on CD Baby with his album "Everyone's A Kid On Christmas Morning" cdbaby.com/cd/johnjaymartyn2) plays the drum in the Hot Java Band. One Drum. It is the therapy he needs after thirty years of hauling his drum set to a countless number of one night stands across the eastern seacoast. John is a Berklee College of Music grad and has spent the last twenty years composing music for television and radio commercials from his studio in South Florida. That studio is Audacity Recording (audacityrecording.com) and it is somewhat of a second home to the boys in the Hot Java Band. In addition to recording this CD, Audacity serves as the Happy Hour rehearsal space to the HJB. John is an accomplished jazz pianist and somewhat of a crooner of jazz standards. One of his key jobs in the HJB is hiding Dan's penny whistle.
Dan McGrath sings like Louis Armstrong and plays banjo like Ralph Stanley. He earned his chops playing rock & roll and soul in bars on the Jersey Shore.
Chaim Rubinov, trumpet, flugelhorn and piano. He has played with artists such as Marvin Hamlisch, Nestor Torres, Tito Puente, Jr., David Sanchez, Melton Mustafa, Miguel Cruz, Jesse Jones Jr., and many others. His versatility allows him to perform many styles of music, ranging from Latin, Haitian, Reggae, Gospel, Jazz, Top Forty, Rock and Roll, R & B, Klezmer and Ladino music.
Ted Strauss was in numerous jam and country rock bands in the NYC area in the late 60's and early 70's. Ted taught himself how to flatpick guitar, play mandolin and sing Bluegrass, Olde Time and Irish music playing in NYC and in the Washington DC area for many years. Always the band techy, Ted developed sound systems and went on the road doing production and sound engineering for artists including John Hartford, Hickory Wind, Vasser Clements and John Prine.
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