By Keith Walsh
While hordes of present day musicians rely on computers, sequencers and other electronic gadgets, the four members of Los Angeles-based Boss Knob get inspiration to create their unique jazz/pop/kitsch sound the traditional way – from decades of experience with their instruments and of close listening to jazz artists and music from films.
“We call it vintage lounge cinema,’ says Boss Knob’s keyboardist Danny Moynahan. “I love making arrangements of cool, obscure songs for the quartet. ‘The Words Get Stuck In My Throat’ is a good example of this. I was a kid when I first heard it, but it stayed with me my whole life. It was featured in ‘The War of the Gargantuas’, a Japanese monster flick from the ’60s. The song is performed in a ‘60s pop style in a swanky high rise restaurant by a beautiful redhead female singer. It ends abruptly in the chorus when one of the monsters reaches in the window and eats the singer (but not before we hear an introduction, an entire verse and a chorus!).”
The quartet features Moynahan on keyboards, David Markowitz on guitar, Austin Nicholsen on bass, and Richard Fultineer on drums. Together they specialize in music with influences going back half a century or so. “The ’60s and early ’70s was a great time for exotic pop and orchestral cheese,” Moynahan explains. “I love Ray Conniff’s take on all the pop hits of his day. Esquivel is also a huge influence. The ’70s was the golden age of soul and R&B. Stevie Wonder, Billy Preston, Earth Wind & Fire, and Leroy Hutson are some of my favorites. And I love what the small jazz groups of the ‘60s and early ‘70s were doing with pop standards. Playing jazz arrangements of contemporary popular music has always been a big part of jazz, but the way Jimmy Smith, Wes Montgomery, and Ramsey Lewis did it has always tickled me. I would say these are some of the influences in the Boss Knob sound.”
Smooth Sounds
The band creates sounds as smooth as you’d expect from four guys who have played together for a good number of decades, as Moynahan explains. “Richard, Dave, and I met in the mid ‘80s. We played in a lot of bands together: Osrama (African funk behind two drummers/singers from Ghana), CoCu (original and funky, large ensemble world music), Buddha Wonka (original funky pop with some odd meters), and a Brazilian band whose name I forget (covers of popular Brazilian songs). By the way, I played saxophone in all those bands. I met Austin about 15 years later. We met in a straight ahead jazz context. The four of us were soon playing in lots of bands together (House Brew, Danny Moynahan Trio, String Theory, The Love Uninhibited Orchestra, and many more).”
Moynahan uses a Crumar Mojo to get the cool sounding Hammond B3 which makes up most of the keyboard sounds in Boss Knob. But that could change, as he explains: “I’ve only scratched the surface on my Mojo. It has 22 vintage organs and two electric keyboards. I used a Wurlitzer 200A and synth (Korg MS2000) setup for a long time when my trio was playing regularly. I miss that sound. I think it would work great in a Boss Knob context. So yes, I’m definitely open to changing up keyboards.”
Like all great jazz bands, improvisation is an important element. “We’re all about taking our songs in new directions every time we play them. In general, our songs aren’t built on specific keyboard or guitar sounds. Rather, they’re built on the melodic and harmonic structure, so the groove and the overall roadmap of the song could be different every time we play it. Changing up the keyboard sounds would definitely evoke new musical ideas. I also enjoy using pedals like the MXR envelope filter and the Boss DD-6 delay to expand our sonic palette. Austin has a great fuzz tone that he uses occasionally.”
The Boss Knob sound is constantly evolving. “We recently began incorporating vocals in our performances,” Moynahan says. “Everybody in Boss Knob sings. Sometimes we’ll sing or chant the melody in unison. Although it’s a sound that a lot of jazz artists employed in the ‘50s and ‘60s (Cannonball Adderley, Donald Byrd, George Shearing, Ray Conniff), it’s not usually associated with the quartet sound. It gives us another color to play with. Other songs in our repertoire take a more traditional approach and have a vocal feature (usually mine) and lyrical content. The majority of our music is instrumental, however.”
Now Playing Near You!
And though the musicians in Boss Knob are serious jazz hipsters with lots of experience in many genres, humor is evident in much of what they do. For example, their video for their interpretion of Ennio Morricone’s “Farewell to Cheyenne” features a cowboy banana duel (you read that right) that inspires laughter at the same time that it makes social commentary. “The humor in the music comes organically,” Moynahan says. “It’s not something we are consciously trying to achieve. The banana fight was a pretty spontaneous development. I wanted to stage the final gun fight scene from “Once Upon a Time In the West,” where the song comes from, but I couldn’t find any good gun props. I did have some giant inflatable bananas however. It worked out great. We’re all of a mind that we have a serious gun problem in this country. And although the video wasn’t intended to be a political commentary on gun violence, it sort of became that through serendipity. Please use bananas responsibly.”
Boss Knob are focusing on bringing their sound to local venues in the Los Angeles and Long Beach areas, including The Wine Bar, The Pike, Rebel Bite, Far Outfit (an extraordinary clothing store in Long Beach) and the Write-off Room in Woodland Hills, and are working on more music for release. In the near future the band will be featured on their own radio show, “‘The Boss Knob Radio Hour’…the brainchild of our guitarist Dave Markowitz,” Moynahan explains. “It will be airing on Long Beach Public Radio (KLPB) very soon. They gave us a Sunday night time slot. 7:00 I think. We record the show at my studio and recruit spouses, family members, and friends to fill the various roles in the sketches. There’s lots of humor in Dave’s writing, and we have a lot of fun recording the show. It’s kind of like Prairie Home Companion set in Long Beach and with a lot more edge.”
Stay tuned for new music from Boss Knob coming soon.
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