This group of all-star musicians including Jon Fishman (Phish), Al Schnier (moe.), Steve Kimock, Marco Benevento (The Duo), Jennifer Hartswick (Trey Anastasio Band), Reed Mathis (Tea Leaf Green) and more, was put together by conductor and founding member, Matt Butler.

For several days, the group went through exploration and co-creation. The results range from hard-hitting grooves that take unexpected twists and turns (“Boots”), to sweet and expansive (“Pensive”), all with a spirit that is both liberated and focused.

For more information, go to www.everyoneorchestra.com

We here at the Macro Management Group are happy to announce the addition of Lefty Williams to our roster. Stop by his website, http://www.lefty-music.com, for more information and to see his tour schedule!

I’ve never seen the Everyone Orchestra (EO) live, but some concert videos I watched this week had me chair dancing in my cubicle. Steve Berlin of Los Lobos likens the EO experience to getting your spiritual passport stamped.

There aren’t a lot of conductors in rock to emulate, if any, but Butler’s violinist mother was a founding member of the Eugene Symphony, and he got to see some classical conductors close up when they stayed with his family while he was growing up.

“I’ve been inspired by John Zorn and a lot of the avant-garde improv conductors,” he told me from Portland, Ore., his hometown, where he moved after years in West Marin’s San Geronimo Valley.

Maestro Butler first impressed me when he was the drummer for Jambay, one of the best of the Bay Area jam bands in the ’90s, in my opinion. In hindsight, I can see the roots of EO in Butler’s 1999 solo album “The Redwood Project,” with its living room jam session feel and layers of percussion.

The 42-year-old Butler picked up some psychedelic showmanship when Jambay was the pit band for Ken Kesey’s play “Twister,” and he likes to conduct wearing a custom-made top hat and tails, looking like the ringmaster in a sonic circus.

Leading the orchestra, he dances around, signals for solos and uses dry erase boards to convey key changes and ideas for a groove. The board might say “funk in A,” “gentle beauty,” “hard edge rock,” “down in the dumps” or “chain gang.” The rest is up to the musicians.

“There are no preparations for it,” says guitarist Steve Kimock, best known for his improvisational work with the progressive Marin fusion band Zero. “You get your instrument, he holds up the white board and everyone just goes.”

The audience has its own part to play. Butler encourages them to clap in time, dance, sing along. He’s been known to turn to the crowd with a sign that says “Wow!”

“It’s all about exploring together and embracing the musical moment,” he explains.

He got the idea for the Everyone Orchestra from a multinational open mic night he saw while traveling in India. The players didn’t speak the same language, but they were able to communicate through music and improvisation.

Butler was living in Woodacre at the time, and when he got home, he started hosting open mics at the San Geronimo Valley Cultural Center. It gave him and multi-instrumentalist Zack Gill of Animal Liberation Orchestra and Jack Johnson (yes, THE Jack Johnson), a neighbor of Butler’s, the opportunity to experiment with different forms of improvisation.

“The idea of a facilitated jam session, not completely free form, but with some kind of structure, became my focus,” he explains. “I’ve been molding it ever since.”

He and Gill came up with the all-inclusive name Everyone Orchestra, and the ensemble made its debut at the Fillmore on New Year’s Eve 2001. Over time, Butler moved from behind his drum kit to the front of the stage, becoming the fiery conductor of an evolving, interactive, improv orchestra.

Over the past decade, he and EO have performed for up to 150,000 people, primarily at large festivals where there are lots of bands to pick players from and big crowds to play for. He’s enlisted an ever shifting cast of musicians from the Grateful Dead, Phish, moe., String Cheese Incident, the Flecktones, Club d’Elf, ALO, King Crimson and Tea Leaf Green, among other outfits from the jam band circuit.

To make his shows even more out there, he’s thrown Tuvan throat singers, live painters, dancers, chanters, choirs, hula hoopers, firespinners, jugglers, stiltwalkers, storytellers and a U.S. senator (super liberal Dennis Kucinich) into the mix.

“It’s been kind of a wild ride,” he laughs.

Butler recently took EO into the studio in New York, and on May 15, “Brooklyn Sessions,” the debut EO album, will be released. It features Butler and guitarist Kimock, drummer John Fishman from Phish, keyboardist Marco Benevento, guitarist Al Schnier from moe., singer and trumpet player Jen Hartswick from the Trey Anastasio Band, Dave Mathews Band saxophonist Jeff Coffin and bassist Reed Mathis of Tea Leaf Green.

On Saturday, Butler brings EO to Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley with a lineup consisting of multi-instrumentalist Michael Kang (String Cheese Incident), guitarist/singer Mark Karan (Ratdog), hammered dulcimer player Jamie Janover, multi-instrumentalist Mike Sugar, drummer Julian Fritz (Gamelan X, Shimshai) and singer Sasha “Butterfly” Rose.

“I feel very at home in Marin,” he says. “It’s great to be coming back and playing some music.”

From the Marin Independent Journal by Paul Liberatore

Written by

Carol Rifkin

Who: Sanctum Sully CD release with Yarn.

When: 9 p.m. Saturday.

Where: The Grey Eagle, 185 Clingman Ave.

Tickets: $10 advance, $12 day of show. 232-5800. www.thegreyeagle.com, www.Sanctumsully.com, www.yarnmusic.com.

Bluegrass instrumentation collides with rock, jam band riffs, mountain music, original songwriting and three-part harmony when West Asheville-based Sanctum Sully takes the stage.

Energetically intent on sharing their collective creative experience in a fun way, Saturday’s show at The Grey Eagle celebrates the release of their second CD “Trade Winds.”

“We’ve got some big shows happening that are new and exciting for us,” said Jay Franck, a founding band member. “We just got back from Suwanee SpringFest. It was one of the best experiences we’ve had as a band, getting to play with some of our heroes.”

“Trade Winds” is professional, polished, well-produced and well-engineered. The quality of their singing stands out, makes you sit up and listen. While many young bands learn to play ferocious instrumentals, vocals are often an afterthought. Not so with Sanctum Sully.

“We have three people who really like to sing. It was hard to get two people to shut up,” joked Franck. Producer Bill McDonald, of Asheville’s Heartwood Studio, became a mentor. With no formal music training, their enthusiasm and his teaching worked. “If it sounds good, we do it,” said Franck. “Someone called us ‘rock grass’ before, and we sort of like that. It’s hard for us to define ourselves. We are just now starting to know who we are.”

All the CD material is original. “There’s no set formula to what a song is supposed to sound like,” said Franck. “That’s why a lot of the sounds on the album are very different from other bands, and hopefully it doesn’t get old to the listener.”

Tim Surrett of Balsam Range plays dobro on the CD, along with fiddler Josh Goforth, who will also play the Grey Eagle show.

“I moved to town in 2007 and ran into Matt Mommsen; we went to Lees-McRae College together in 2001 and had lost touch,” said Franck. After their chance meeting, they each brought a friend who played music into the new group. Franck is on mandolin and vocals, his friend Win Webster’s on guitar and vocals, Mommsen is on guitar and vocals, and his friend Bill Turner covers banjo. They found bass player Matt Blue on the online classified site Craigslist.

“Since living in Asheville, all of our music is drifting towards Appalachian,” said Franck. “I still like all of that, and we’ve compiled all that into a bluegrass band.”

Carol Rifkin writes about bluegrass and traditional music for take5. CMRifkin@gmail.com.

via West Asheville’s Sanctum Sully turns up the bluegrass heat with new CD | The Asheville Citizen-Times | citizen-times.com.

There’s little doubt that we live in a distinguished time for acoustic and bluegrass music. Twenty-five years ago, the great young pickers of our day would have been teasing their hair out and stuffing themselves into leather pants in preparation to play awful music specifically geared for picking up high school girls. Nowadays, it’s cool to grow a beard and trade sweeppicking for three-finger style. The most inevitable outcome to the rise of a new generation of super-pickers is a litany of minor derivations made to the generations-old formula, the negation of the old-school formalism that bluegrass demands of its players. Asheville quintet Sanctum Sully are no doubt grounded in that tradition, but have built up a sterling reputation as a band capable of unfailing energy on stage geared toward the barroom rather than the back porch, mixing in Phish and Doors covers along with old-timey staples, propelled by glassy three-part harmonies and clean, colorful arrangements. On their new album Trade Winds, they take on the roots of Appalachia and collide it with the more consistent strains of country. On a song like “Ain’t That Good,” where you’d expect vocal harmonies to ascend skyward like a McCoury family communion, Sanctum Sully spins it into minor-key, Oak Ridge Boys-inspired pop refrain. The crux of Sanctum Sully is indeed their powerful instrumental abilities, and on the album’s title track they embark on steady picking runs, breaking stride only to punctuate Jay Franck’s gentle tenor. The band is most reflective of their live energy on the plucky instrumental breakdown “KMA,” while at their most engaging lyrically in singing about the “competition orange and matching rust” of their shine-running truck on the rowdy, sometimes bawdy “Custom Deluxe.” With the help of veteran bluegrass producer Bill McDonald, Sanctum Sully retain a close affinity to the traditional, while still involving just enough swagger to tick off their teachers.

68/100

Sanctum Sully will debut Trade Winds at The Blind Tiger on Friday, April 6 with Yarn in support.

For a chance to have your band’s CD reviewed, mail it to:

YES! Weekly, 5500 Adams Farm Lane, Suite 204, Greensboro, NC 27407. ATTN: Ryan Snyder.

via Yes Weekly – taking a listen.

By Alli Marshall on 04/05/2012 08:46 AM

Local bluegrass band Sanctum Sully (Matt Blue on bass and vocals, Jay Franck on mandolin and vocals, Matt Mommsen on guitar and vocals, Bill Turner on banjo and Win Webster on guitar and vocals) drops sophomore album “Trade Winds” at The Grey Eagle this Saturday (9 p.m. $10 advance or $12 day of show; Yarn, from N.Y., opens). But first, they met with Xpress at The ByWater to talk about the record and perform the track “Back to Knoxville.” Video by Jesse Hamm.

via Sanctum Sully: Ready for their album release party | Mountain Xpress | Asheville, NC.