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Groove Alchemy plays Original music that moves between Rock, New Orleans Funk, Ska and Latin styles with lyrics about real-world experiences touching on everything from Insomnia to the wild weather that often seems so be upon us. We also play related covers from the Meters to Steely Dan. Our songs keep the focus on dancing even as we enhance some of our material with collective soloing and improvisation.

Bio

This band started at a party. Two musicians living about 4 houses away from each other started talking music, realized how much they had in common and thought playing together might be fun. They were right. One was a bassist and the other played sax. They had been living on the same block for years. Bill the sax player started it off at the party by saying “Hey, still playing in that Who Band?” Tim, the bassist replying “Ahh no … long story. Hey do you play?” A few years later after much rehearsal, recording and video we had become a band.

Groove Alchemy plays what we call Rock/Ska/Funk with a side of Jazz – a tag line, certainly – but it goes a little deeper than that. The ideas for this band came primarily from a book Tim wrote – The Bassist’s Bible: How to Play Every Groove from Afro-Cuban to Zydeco so maybe that helps explain things. Like a lot of musicians we love styles from around the world so why limit the music? Our original songs morph across boundaries mixing Funk lines with Samba pulses or Ska with Blues while, underscoring it all – Rock pulls everything together. At times we develop a huge sound for just four players, other times dropping it down to more subtle, nuanced playing but we always keep the focus on dance music even as we enhance some of our material with collective soloing and improvisation.

The songwriting is important to us too, with lyrics from real world experiences touching on everything from sleeplessness (Insomnia) and global warming (Bipolar Weather) to cultural changes (UnNatural Selection ) and FOMO (Step Out). We mix our material with covers that suggest or blend with our songs from artists like The Neville Brothers, Steely Dan, and even a little Led Zeppelin and Grateful Dead all played either note for note or in our own interpretive style.

The musicians in our band have decades of experience playing around the SF Bay Area in original, tribute, and cover bands. For example our Bassist Tim Boomer spent 7 years with Who Too (The Who) over 30 years with his original band Offbeats and countless bands for a year or two each. Our Sax player Bill Sparks has over 10 years in Slinky Thing (Steely Dan) and perhaps more time in Bay Bridge Beats playing covers and our drummer Doug Ashcraft played with Not The Hoople (Mot the Hoople) as well as local faves Swamp Voodoo and The Gnarly Men.

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