North Shore Sunday
August 17, 2007
Hold Onto Your Horns
By JC Lockwood
The Boston Horns, featuring Henley Douglas Jr. on sax, Garret Savluk on trumpet and guitarist Jeff Buckridge, have
been burning up stages with high-energy, hard-grooving funk since 1999. Whitfield is a rock and soul legend. Together,
they should be an unstoppable force.
The Horns have been tearing it up in one form or another — as a full band, as a hire-out section, as the Heavy Metal
Horns and as the Boston Horns — for the better part of two decades. They’ve had highs and lows, playing everywhere
from divey Route 1 rat holes to Wembley Stadium.
But the past year or so has been extraordinarily productive for the Salem-based funk band: The Horns have released
not one but three albums and done a mini-tour of Japan, where they’re treated, well, like rock stars.
And they’re fresh out of the studio with yet another album, a CD that ramps up the party by teaming up the six-piece,
kick-brass band with R&B brawler Barrence Whitfield. And they’ll be giving everybody a taste of what that is all about this
Saturday, when the Horns headline the first-ever Salem Jazz and Soul Festival with Whitfield as a special guest.
The daylong concert will recreate and renew the vibrant jazz scene that began at the Salem Willows in the ’20s, when
Duke Ellington and other big band heavyweights played the Charleshurst Ballroom — a time recalled in “Music Is My
Mistress,” Ellington’s autobiography. The free festival will feature local aces like Fats Hammond and Headshaft, as well
as Bobby Keyes, a guy who has worked with everybody from Jerry Lee Lewis and Sleepy LaBeef to Ben E. King and
Martha Reeves.
No one knows exactly how it’s gonna play out, but one thing is certain, says Boston Horns saxman and longtime Witch
City resident Henley Douglas Jr.: “People are going to have their minds blown.”
The mind-blowing has been a long time coming. Douglas, one of the early advocates for the festival, had been talking
about it for about five years. This year, the people came out and jump-started the process. A committee of 12 started
working in January, really pushing the event.
“The word got out and people stepped up and said they would like to help — and really meant it,” Douglas says. And the
city stepped up to the plate, expediting the permit process. “It was amazing how receptive the city was to it.”
No one really knows what the weekend will bring. Douglas expects between 1,500 to 2,000 people to show up, “but there
could be way more than that,” he says. “You just don’t know.”
He’s been seriously underestimating the juice the festival has since the April fundraiser, featuring Whitfield, The Boston
Horns, Los Sugar Kings, Eric Reardon and Catfish Lucy. They hoped to draw maybe 200 people. “We got double that,”
says Douglas, who also fronts his own soul-funk group, Soul Force, and has also worked extensively with Vox Pop, an
award-winning spoken word-music ensemble. “We had to turn people away. It was cool. This was when I started
thinking, ‘This might work.’” Same thing happened with the Boston Horns Big Band, a 17-piece ensemble that played at
the Peabody Essex Museum, and this week’s reunion of the Heavy Metal Horns, the last in a series of events leading up
to Saturday’s festival.
“This,” says Whitfield, “could be the start of something big.”
(continued)
Savage buzz
The Horns-Whitfield collaboration was one of those “obvious” projects that nobody ever got around to doing: After all,
both were doing roots, both were based on the North Shore. It was a natural. “Finally it dawned on me,” says Douglas,
“Duh, we should do something together.”
“We wanted to play together for years; finding the time was always the problem,” says Whitfield. One night they got
together and jammed and “there was some electricity, some buzz-buzz going on,” says Whitfield.
The “buzz-buzz” spilled over to the recording sessions for the new Horns album, scheduled to be released in
September.
“He tore it up completely,” says Horns trumpeter Garret Savluk.
Whitfield plays on four tunes on the disc. He does a James Brown medley of “Make It Funky” and “Giving Up Food for
Funk,” which also features a guest performance by Sam Kinninger of Soullive, who may make a guest appearance at the
festival. He also sings Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and “A Real Mother for You” by Johnny “Guitar”
Watson. All these tunes are likely on the set list for the festival.
“It’s gonna be fun,” says the singer. “A huge audience gets to see Barrence Whitfield get funky again.”
It’s not exactly “back to the roots” for the Beverly-based singer, best known for his work with his rock band Barrence
Whitfield and the Savages. “I never left the roots,” he says. “It’s more like getting back to the funk” — and back to his
youth in New Jersey. “It’s bringing back some cool memories and lots of things to work with. Little Richard, Funkadelic,
James Brown: It’s all from the same vein. For me, it’s like going back home.”
For the Horns, the collaboration “gives us a whole different dimension,” says Savluk. “It lets us kick up the party a little
bit.”
“I think people are going to be blown away because they haven’t heard Barrence sing soul in a long time,” says
Douglas.
Over the years, organizers believe, the festival will become a self-sustaining entity. For now, though, they’re just hoping
for good weather and a good time.
“It’s a serious, good-time party thing,” says Douglas. “I always want the people at the shows to have fun, and feel good. I
like to see smiling faces out there.”
E-mail J.C. Lockwood at jlockwoo@cnc.com.
August 17, 2007
Hold Onto Your Horns
By JC Lockwood
The Boston Horns, featuring Henley Douglas Jr. on sax, Garret Savluk on trumpet and guitarist Jeff Buckridge, have
been burning up stages with high-energy, hard-grooving funk since 1999. Whitfield is a rock and soul legend. Together,
they should be an unstoppable force.
The Horns have been tearing it up in one form or another — as a full band, as a hire-out section, as the Heavy Metal
Horns and as the Boston Horns — for the better part of two decades. They’ve had highs and lows, playing everywhere
from divey Route 1 rat holes to Wembley Stadium.
But the past year or so has been extraordinarily productive for the Salem-based funk band: The Horns have released
not one but three albums and done a mini-tour of Japan, where they’re treated, well, like rock stars.
And they’re fresh out of the studio with yet another album, a CD that ramps up the party by teaming up the six-piece,
kick-brass band with R&B brawler Barrence Whitfield. And they’ll be giving everybody a taste of what that is all about this
Saturday, when the Horns headline the first-ever Salem Jazz and Soul Festival with Whitfield as a special guest.
The daylong concert will recreate and renew the vibrant jazz scene that began at the Salem Willows in the ’20s, when
Duke Ellington and other big band heavyweights played the Charleshurst Ballroom — a time recalled in “Music Is My
Mistress,” Ellington’s autobiography. The free festival will feature local aces like Fats Hammond and Headshaft, as well
as Bobby Keyes, a guy who has worked with everybody from Jerry Lee Lewis and Sleepy LaBeef to Ben E. King and
Martha Reeves.
No one knows exactly how it’s gonna play out, but one thing is certain, says Boston Horns saxman and longtime Witch
City resident Henley Douglas Jr.: “People are going to have their minds blown.”
The mind-blowing has been a long time coming. Douglas, one of the early advocates for the festival, had been talking
about it for about five years. This year, the people came out and jump-started the process. A committee of 12 started
working in January, really pushing the event.
“The word got out and people stepped up and said they would like to help — and really meant it,” Douglas says. And the
city stepped up to the plate, expediting the permit process. “It was amazing how receptive the city was to it.”
No one really knows what the weekend will bring. Douglas expects between 1,500 to 2,000 people to show up, “but there
could be way more than that,” he says. “You just don’t know.”
He’s been seriously underestimating the juice the festival has since the April fundraiser, featuring Whitfield, The Boston
Horns, Los Sugar Kings, Eric Reardon and Catfish Lucy. They hoped to draw maybe 200 people. “We got double that,”
says Douglas, who also fronts his own soul-funk group, Soul Force, and has also worked extensively with Vox Pop, an
award-winning spoken word-music ensemble. “We had to turn people away. It was cool. This was when I started
thinking, ‘This might work.’” Same thing happened with the Boston Horns Big Band, a 17-piece ensemble that played at
the Peabody Essex Museum, and this week’s reunion of the Heavy Metal Horns, the last in a series of events leading up
to Saturday’s festival.
“This,” says Whitfield, “could be the start of something big.”
(continued)
Savage buzz
The Horns-Whitfield collaboration was one of those “obvious” projects that nobody ever got around to doing: After all,
both were doing roots, both were based on the North Shore. It was a natural. “Finally it dawned on me,” says Douglas,
“Duh, we should do something together.”
“We wanted to play together for years; finding the time was always the problem,” says Whitfield. One night they got
together and jammed and “there was some electricity, some buzz-buzz going on,” says Whitfield.
The “buzz-buzz” spilled over to the recording sessions for the new Horns album, scheduled to be released in
September.
“He tore it up completely,” says Horns trumpeter Garret Savluk.
Whitfield plays on four tunes on the disc. He does a James Brown medley of “Make It Funky” and “Giving Up Food for
Funk,” which also features a guest performance by Sam Kinninger of Soullive, who may make a guest appearance at the
festival. He also sings Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and “A Real Mother for You” by Johnny “Guitar”
Watson. All these tunes are likely on the set list for the festival.
“It’s gonna be fun,” says the singer. “A huge audience gets to see Barrence Whitfield get funky again.”
It’s not exactly “back to the roots” for the Beverly-based singer, best known for his work with his rock band Barrence
Whitfield and the Savages. “I never left the roots,” he says. “It’s more like getting back to the funk” — and back to his
youth in New Jersey. “It’s bringing back some cool memories and lots of things to work with. Little Richard, Funkadelic,
James Brown: It’s all from the same vein. For me, it’s like going back home.”
For the Horns, the collaboration “gives us a whole different dimension,” says Savluk. “It lets us kick up the party a little
bit.”
“I think people are going to be blown away because they haven’t heard Barrence sing soul in a long time,” says
Douglas.
Over the years, organizers believe, the festival will become a self-sustaining entity. For now, though, they’re just hoping
for good weather and a good time.
“It’s a serious, good-time party thing,” says Douglas. “I always want the people at the shows to have fun, and feel good. I
like to see smiling faces out there.”
E-mail J.C. Lockwood at jlockwoo@cnc.com.
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