3rd Annual Black & White Ball with Eddie Roberts and The West Coast Sounds ft. Wil Blades on organ and The Jazz Mafia Horns, Shotgun Wedding & Luna Moon of Fire and Isis Dance

Saturday, May 12

Doors at 9 PM

$25

$2o advanced tickets available at DTA in Arcata, Humboldt Glass in Arcata, The Works in Eureka &
Brown Paper Tickets

21 and over

Morninoonanight Presents 3rd Annual Black & White Ball with Eddie Roberts and The West Coast Sounds ft. Will Blades on organ and The Jazz Mafia Horns, Shotgun Wedding & Luna Moon of Fire and Isis Dance!

Eddie Roberts

Eddie Roberts started his music career proper in 1989 aged 18, having left his Welsh homeland to study Jazz at Leeds College of Music. More interested in live performing and getting his own thing going than in college work, he quickly rooted out the best players in town and set up his first band, The Jazz Mailmen, dedicated to playing the golden era of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. After transcribing all the parts and enforcing a dress code of Bop suits, he set about taking the UK Jazz Dance scene by storm. Eddie’s love for 60′s Blue Note & Hard Bop, however, didn’t waver despite the media hype of the Deep Funk scene, and after a conversation with Adrian Gibson Eddie was commissioned to produce a Hard Bop track for the Jazz dancers to go on a ‘Messin Around’ compilation. Eddie had ulterior motives at this recording session – to record a number of ‘old-school’ tracks with re-arranging & remixing in mind. This project is called Roughneck (a term often used to describe Eddie’s dynamic guitar style) and over the course of 2003 the multi-tracks were fed into Eddie’s creaking mainframe. ‘Diggin’ Around’, the first 12″, was released in February 2003 and a wave of positive responses hit Cooker’s shores. (“Pure & genuine, double bass monster. Strong heavy Jazz elements. Very, very good!” said one Espen Horne). Then the original New Mastersounds quartet (bass, drums, guitar, Hammond) took matters into their own hands and set up a dedicated label for the band, One Note Records, with drummer Simon Allen at the helm. The second NMS album, ‘Be Yourself’ was written, recorded and mixed over summer 2003 and released in the UK that October. A much broader project than the first album (which had been, to a degree, constrained by the demands of Keb Darge’s Deep Funk dancefloor crowd) ‘Be Yourself’ reflects more truly the scope of Eddie’s musical influences and experience, hence the title.

Wil Blades

From cookin’ with Blues legend John Lee Hooker, organ summits with B-3 master Dr. Lonnie Smith, television and radio appearances, young Wil Blades is gaining critical acclaim and international recognition.  Blades, a native Chicagoan, has become the San Francisco Bay Area’s first call organist and is rapidly gaining momentum throughout the country.  In 2007 and 2008, he was named in the Downbeat critics poll under “Rising Star” for organ.  For the past several years, Wil has been wowing Bay Area audiences with groups such as “O.G.D.,” “Motherbug”, “Amendola Vs. Blades”, “Steppin’.”  In addition to performing with legendary artists such as John Lee Hooker and Dr. Lonnie Smith, Wil has performed and recorded with Melvin Sparks, Idris Muhammad, Joe Louis Walker, Don Braden, Donald Harrison, Karl Denson, Will Bernard, Scott Amendola, Charlie Hunter, Stanton Moore, Betty Joplin, Eddie Marshall, Herbie Lewis, and many others. Wil has kept the traditional sounds of Jimmy Smith, Larry Young, and “Groove” Holmes alive, while creating a more personal, modern sound.  In Wil’s words, “I feel indebted to the tradition and masters of the Hammond Organ, but while trying to keep it going, I’m also focused on bringing my contemporary influences to the table.”  His playing is rhythmic, funky and bluesy, yet his original compositions are harmonically intriguing and unique. Wil currently leads his own groups around the Bay Area and is dedicating his time to teaching the Hammond B-3 Organ privately and at the Jazzschool in Berkeley.  Current musical collaborations include groups with guitarist Will Bernard, Jazz legend Idris Muhammad and a duo project with drummer Scott Amendola.  Wil’s debut record, “Sketchy”, is now available on Doodlin’ Records.

The Shotgun Wedding Quintet

An elite team of instrumental outlaws, The Jazz Mafia has taken many shapes since its inception, the most notable of which is certainly The Shotgun Wedding Quintet. Fresh off their nationwide tour with hip-hop stalwarts Zion I & The Grouch, and having backed many other music rebels in the studio and on the stage: Beck, Digital Underground, Lyrics Born, Carlos Santana, Mixmaster Mike, and Q-Bert, The Shotgun Wedding Quintet have recorded twelve new tales of San Francisco’s underworld. “Tales From The Barbary Coast”, the group’s sophomore album, is a Bay Area themed record with red-light district saloon-seedy stories in sync with the vibe of the California Gold Rush days where San Francisco’s Barbary Coast got its name, but executed with all the edge of right now. “Each song has it’s own character,” says Dublin, the group’s MC. “We commit to each song by dropping the instruments we played on the previous track, and picking up a whole different set of instruments for the next number to give it the right feel. What sounded like a brass band on the last song suddenly sounds like an electro slap project. There’s always that Shotgun flavor to it but our focus is total commitment to the song, so it has a life of it’s own that will last.” Forming in 2003, The Shotgun Wedding Quintet has worked to create an illicit blend of hip hop and jazz that’s rooted in tradition, but is ever looking forward. Each member of the band is a multi-instrumentalist, making use of samplers and looping-techniques to create a wall of sound as band members shift from instrument to instrument building continuous layers of music and rhythm. As a result, this 4-piece ensemble creates the sound of a 10-piece group that is equal parts big-band and boom-bap, paying homage to the art of improvisation both lyrically and instrumentally. The Shotgun Wedding Quintet is comprised of Dublin (MC), Adam Theis (bass, synth bass, trombone, tuba), Joe Cohen (sax, organ, synthesizer, piano), and pDubL (pronounced P-Double, on drums, sampler). “Tales From The Barbary Coast” features guest appearances by Teeko, Will Blades, George Ban-Weiss, and production by Ben Yonas.