Greater than the sum of the parts
Published 8:00 am Wednesday, July 7, 2004
Johnny Sound and the Furies open the Wednesday Concerts in the Park series.
Johnny Sound and the Furies may play second line, but they are first-rate.
Second line – the syncopated, Afro-Cuban and blues-derived groove played by New Orleans bands, as the musicians lead mourners home from a funeral – is just one of the diverse traditions melded by the four accomplished island musicians who open the Wednesday Concerts in Waterfront Park series.
“Todd (Houghton) tends to lean to country,” Furies drummer Dan Suchman said. “Jeremy (Rothbaum) leans to ’50s rock and roll and the New Orleans second line thing; and Stuart (Stranahan) and I come from ’70s pop-rock and a lot of R&B.
“But we all have a common love of music-making, and there’s enough overlap in the styles we enjoy to find common ground.”
While some of the Furies’ music may be rock-and-roll standards, there are numbers less well-known, such as Tower of Power’s “Diggin’ on James Brown,” and “Don’t Change Horses.”
The band’s tendency toward the esoteric is fed by Rothbaum’s knowledge of music history.
“Jeremy has an encyclopedic memory for music,” Suchman said. “He knows everything about obscure songwriters from the ’50s and ’60s.”
About half the tunes the band plays are original material written by Rothbaum or Houghton, both professional musicians and teachers who came to the Furies with extensive repertoires.
High standards
Having half of the group composed of professional musicians has raised expectations and standards overall, Suchman believes.
“We’re not just reading from a sheet,” he said. “We rehearse two to three hours every weekend to learn and refine the music and vocals and improve the performance.
“Blues players who get together and jam – that’s easy. It’s formulaic. But to do diverse types of music with vocal harmonies and to do them well requires a lot of time spent on arrangement and rehearsals.”
Johnny Sound and the Furies came together four years ago, when Stranahan and Suchman met while taking a jazz workshop from Alan Simcoe. They had a lot of music in common, and shared notes during breaks.
“Stu and I would go into these rock-and-roll riffs we recognized from childhood,” he said. “We were very disruptive in that class.”
The chance meeting soon generated the band, first formed with Suchman’s friend, guitarist Mark Hoffman.
The name choice represented a melding of artistic egos into a harmonious whole while preserving something of the individual contributions.
That approach remained a constant when Hoffman left after a year and Rothbaum came on board to contribute vocals and keyboard. Houghton joined to play bass and sing.
“The music does sort of parallel the difference in personalities, depending who is singing the lead on the the song,” Stranahan said, “and yet we’re able to harmonize, both musically and personally.”
