Local musicians and a pair of rock veterans come together for a benefit at Eastwood’s Palace Theatre
It wouldn’t be terribly hyperbolic to say that the arts organizations in Central New York that have felt the worst effects of the U.S. economy’s downturn are all those you could shake a stick at. Among those is the venerable Central New York Jazz Arts Foundation, the headquarters of which, Jazz Central, 441 E. Washington St., alarmingly displays posters on its front door exclaiming, “Save Arts and Culture!” The organization’s executive director, Larry Luttinger, explained that the foundation has “been hit by a perfect storm of funding issues,” tangentially providing a reason for the posters’ presence. While Luttinger is disinclined to name names, he explained that the foundation’s private, corporate and governmental sponsors have themselves come upon difficult times, and as such have “reduced, delayed and canceled support” in the previous year, leaving the foundation in a difficult position.
As a result, Luttinger has gotten creative in his fundraising efforts for the organization he founded in 1995. He and local music promoter Tom Honan have teamed up to mount a daylong concert to be held Sunday, Jan. 23, 1 to 8 p.m., at Eastwood’s Palace Theatre, 2384 James St. The show will feature headliners Commander Cody as well as Professor Louie and the Crowmatix. Luttinger hopes the concert will help his foundation overcome what he describes as a “cash flow problem.”
The executive director further explained that should his organization be unable to field the blow of its financial shortcomings, its executive positions will most likely feel the effects. However, such difficulties would also affect the many music education programs the foundation provides for young students. Those programs include the CNY Jazz Art Institutes, ensembles of students age 18 and younger designed to teach music professionalism, as well as the SummerJazz Workshop, a one-week course that divulges the secrets of improv to students, among others. “Yes, we would have to make some difficult choices in terms of what programs to favor or eliminate,” Luttinger said.
Currently the educational programs assist 4,000 students annually, according to documents released by the organization. It is also the financial engine that drives the Central New York Jazz Orchestra, a professional fellowship of jazz musicians in the area, for which Luttinger is the drummer. Furthermore, the CNYJO organizes the annual Northeast Jazz and Wine Festival, traditionally a multiday concert held in July in Clinton Square.
The theater at Jazz Central also serves as a venue for a wide variety of arts-related events each year.
All of the musicians and organizers for the concert, according to Luttinger, are performing “in-kind” (i.e. pro bono), a fact that seems to demonstrate how much the foundation means to local musicians.
Other arts organizations throughout the area have also felt the pain brought on by the slow economy. Many summer music festivals also pared themselves down in 2010.
And among the most shocking developments resulting from Syracuse’s economic malaise, the New York State Blues Festival announced its cancellation last June after many years of continuity.
Performances for the foundation’s benefit show will be split into different areas throughout the Palace: the lobby, a VIP lounge and the theater proper. A large showing of Syracuse-based bands is slated to help with the effort, including: Mark Hoffmann, 1 p.m. (lobby); The Mojo Band, 2 to 3 p.m. (theater); Isreal Hagan, 3 to 3:30 p.m.(lobby); Andrew Carroll Jazz Trio, 3 to 3:30 p.m. (VIP lounge); Los Blancos, 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. (theater); Todd Hobin and Doug Moncrief, 4:30 to 5 p.m. (lobby); Andrew Carroll Jazz Trio, 4:30 to 5 p.m. (VIP lounge).
Headliners Professor Louie and the Crowmatix and the Commander Cody Band will perform from 5 to 7 p.m. in the theater, with a jazz jam session in the VIP lounge to follow from 7 to 8 p.m.
Local music legend Todd Hobin explained that he has enjoyed performing at Jazz Central in the past. “I don’t want to see that go away,” he said of the venue. Answering a question with an even better one, Hobin went on to detail why he would be interested in performing for such a cause: “Why do birds sing?
Because they can!” Professor Louie and Commander Cody, both of whom were available by telephone last week (Commander Cody had to finish his cheeseburger first), echoed the reality that musicians must support each other in difficult times in recounting the story of how they came to know one another.
Louie (born Aaron Hurwitz), in addition to the success the Crowmatix has garnered since its founding in 2001, is perhaps best known for his work as producer for several of The Band’s final albums. When The Band all but disintegrated due to the 1999 passing of Rick Danko, Louie figured it was about time to join together members of the Woodstock, N.Y., music community, which it has been a part of for decades.
The Crowmatix have since released seven albums. The latest, Whispering Pines (Woodstock Records), has received some Grammy attention in early rounds of nominee voting.
Rock legend and visual artist Commander Cody (a.k.a. George Frayne), has seen an impressive run through the music business as well, having been a large part of San Francisco’s incendiary 1960s music scene. Known especially for a few tunes that ascended the Billboard charts, like his 1972 cover of “Hot Rod Lincoln” and a 1973 interpretation of “Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette),” the commander is also an accomplished painter.
Commander Cody:
Alias George Frayne, who was cool enough to drop by during a long-ago Syracuse New Times Christmas party, performs at Sunday’s January Jam.
Both musicians explained that they met by chance shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when they were asked to perform for various benefit concerts for firefighters and police officers who assisted with the response to that day’s New York City terrorist attack.
“We started doing more and more of those {benefits} within reason,” Louie explained, “and Commander Cody was on those bills a lot. The commander happened to be a really good guy, and really wanted to help out. Everybody felt so bad. We started becoming friendly, and then we would go do some benefit and he’d go, ‘Hey, why don’t you come play some organ?’” Commander Cody further explained that the two were especially drawn together through the commonalities they discovered in their backgrounds. “I thought his band was really great, and we started talking. Turns out he’s from Queens, and I lived in Queens for a while, and we got along, just talking like that. At one time he was a cab driver in Queens and I’d lived in Queens and Brooklyn when I was a little kid, and all that stuff.”
Putting his background in engineering and producing to work, Professor Louie eventually decided to help Cody with the process of piecing together Cody’s first studio album in roughly 20 years. Dopers, Drunks and Everyday Losers was released on Blind Pig records in 2009 to critical acclaim and a mainstream nod via a piece aired recently on National Public Radio.
Louie also lent Cody a hand by booking studio time for Cody in his own digs in Woodstock in addition to negotiating a deal with Blind Pig to distribute the album. No small addendum to the story of his recent rebound is the fact the Commander Cody has finally compiled his life’s work as a visual artist into a book called Art, Music and Life, released in 2008 through Qbook Press. The book is available through his own website, www.commandercody.com, as well as on Amazon.com; Cody said that he hopes to arrange a deal to sell the book at Barnes and Noble locations in the coming year.
Regarding how well their styles blend, Commander Cody explained: “If you think about differences between just essentially The Band and Commander Cody, we’re talking essentially roots, American music, but The Band plays that funky-little-kind-of-slow, like white-boy {music}, and I play the straight-ahead boogiewoogie rock’n’roll mixed in with a little country swing and stuff like that, which makes it unique. So each one of us has different things that make us unique and it fits well together.”
Not
only do Commander Cody and Professor Louie find each other’s musical
jives agreeable, but they also seem to agree on a timeless tenet drawn
from the history of rock music: that the music business is cyclical, and
that the young often have much to learn from the more mature. That is
precisely part of what the Central New York Jazz Arts Foundation does
for local music students, as well.
“Every other generation forgets about {the previous}, because you know what it is? You hate what your dad did. Well, your kids are going to love what your granddad did. That’s how young kids today discover the blues,” Commander Cody noted. “When you were a kid, too, you thought {the newest music} must be cool because it’s on the radio, and then you realize later: Well, that’s all bullshit because that’s all fixed. And then somebody hands you your first Ike and Tina Turner single from 1958 and you go ‘Oh, no!’ That’s how things get around.”
Professor Louie, on the other hand, is especially glad to lend the foundation a hand given his fondness for his own early music education. “We’re really pretty proud to be involved with this,” Professor Louie said. “With my background, I was born in Peekskill, N.Y. Through the Peekskill school system they had an excellent music teacher by the name of Vinny Corzine. He really gave all of us a great background to go out and be musicians, in terms of theory and lessons and big bands and orchestras. That’s where I got started, and when I was in high school I started playing in club bands and rock’n’roll bands.”
Furthermore, Professor Louie thinks there’s still much wealth to be found in studying rock music itself, which the concert’s many local performers have spent decades perfecting. “The music of the people and the roots music don’t go away,” Professor Louie said. “It just cycles around a bit. Every new generation has new discoveries and finds new things in the old.”
Advance tickets to the event are $15 general admission, $30 for VIP tickets; at the door, $20 for general admission and $35 for VIP admission. For more information, visit www. cnyjazz.org, or call 479-5299.
Rockers to the rescue: Among the participants at the January Jam will be (clockwise from lower left) Professor Louie and the Crowmatix, guitarist Mark Hoffmann and Central New York Jazz Arts Foundation executive director Larry Luttinger.
