Category: music

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"It'll Come From Somewhere" By Funktion Key 3

Above: The band, Funk n' Waffles (campus), 19 November 2012.

Recent mix, harmonica'd solo fix, reminder that the ReverbNation page exists (currently #13 in… something).

And the official statement from the band after the passing of Mike Brandt from this plane is below, with my own thanks to our fearless leader Sean Kelly for continuing to polish up tunes whose drum parts were first committed to Fostex over 20 years ago (one of the fringe benefits of playing an instrument that only requires one plug is you can re-track until well after the cows come home!). Had film not been the medium of choice for picture-taking at this point (my then not having owned a real camera), I'd have accompanied the post with a picture of every mic we owned, several running into a Radio Shack mixer, a city works project of stands holding every cymbal I owned at the time, and a beaten-up round badge Gretsch ensemble in an absolute hodgepodge of colors.

UPDATE: I am sad to report that we are no longer an active band due to the untimely passing of our beloved bass player / keyboard player Mike Brandt in October of 2020. His intellect, wit, musical genius (hell, all-around genius), general kindness, and especially his friendship are greatly missed every day. He was entirely irreplaceable.

I am still working on finishing the recordings/mixing/mastering of tunes we had been working on for years, and they will appear on this site as I get them done. I am determined to share Mike’s talent with the world. That will be in the near future [he says optimistically]. So, please stay tuned. Take care, and tell someone you love them today.

Here's the old band bio as it always read.

Funktion Key 3 is a Syracuse, NY area band that plays bluesy rock original music, getting a tad funky from time to time. The band has been a three piece since its inception back in 1998, though we'd been playing together to record original material for a year before officially becoming a band, and still has the original lineup up characters. They are: Damian "Dr. Chops" Allis on drums, Michael Brandt on bass guitar, fretless bass guitar, Chapman Stick, and keyboards; and Sean Kelly on guitars, harmonica, and vocals.

Their repertoire also includes a wide range of cover tunes from the likes of Jethro Tull, Little Feat, Toad The Wet Sprocket, Michael Hedges, Living Colour, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Peter Gabriel, Rush, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jack Johnson… which they can pull out when the situation calls for covers.

www.reverbnation.com/funktionkey3/

I hear that bass sound and it makes me happy.

Aside – the ReverbNation plugin for WordPress produces (currently, at least for me) a gigantic whitespace at bottom when you try to put a song in. Use the "embed" option instead with a share link from the artist page (what you're seeing above). And if you're seeing a "502 Bad Gateway" right now, that's because ReverbNation just blew another fuse.

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Dad And The Other Boys In The Band – Excelsior Cornet Band Members In The Gilded Age (Ep. 7)

Above: Screen cap from the far back-end of episode 7 of The Gilded Age. John Allis (dad, promoted to "papou," front-and-center (sticks in hand, his part memorized, of course)) with a few of the Excelsior Cornet Band members (I'm bass drummer emeritus) surrounding. Screen cap taken from the S.U. Brass Ensemble (I'm bass drummer emeritus) Facebook Page.

Nepotism? Slow content month? You be the judge. But didn't want to let the occasion pass without acknowledging the appearance of my father on a subscription cable service.

And, from the syracuse.com website (10 March 2022, article by Geoff Herbert and giving some more details about my former superior officer Jeff Stockham):

The Syracuse-based Excelsior Cornet Band, portraying the Edison Electric Illuminating Company Brass Band on HBO's “The Gilded Age," is pictured (L to R): Mark Anderson, Dickson Rothwell, Angelo Candela, Larry Luttinger, Lee Turner, John Allis, Al Thomson, David Driesen, Steve Weisse, Jeff Stockham.

When a movie or television show needs authentic-sounding 19th century music, they call Jeff Stockham in Syracuse, N.Y.

Stockham, who was inducted in the Syracuse Area Music Awards (SAMMYS) Hall of Fame last week, has previously appeared in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” as part of the U.S. Marine Band, served as a consultant for the 2003 movie “Cold Mountain,” provided period instruments for 2013?s “Copperhead,” performed in Netflix’s “House of Cards,” and contributed to the PBS documentary “F.S. Key: After the Song,” using original instruments from the 1830s for the story of “The Star Spangled Banner” composer Francis Scott Key.

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"Michael Brandt remembered for compassion, skill as electrical engineer and musician" In The Daily Orange

For the record (DO article, local PDF), a quality write-up about Mike Brandt just posted in The Daily Orange, with thanks to Michael Sessa for the remote gumshoeing.

“You put a bass and a keyboard in front of him and he turned into Geddy Lee, without the vocals,” Allis said.

This is 100% true, although Mike took many more solos. F3 did a cover of Peter Gabriel’s D.I.Y., for which one of us “not-Sean” had to do vocals – this meant I had to do vocals. For the other story in the article, “ransacking” may have been a slightly overly-dramatic description of the event that I also fondly remembered in the other post.

Interviews become stories, stories become tales, tales become legend.

One of the other parts to that theft story was the police escort to the house where the gear had been stashed. The drums and two guitars were taken from Mike's house despite there being a keyboard, a bass, another bass, a Chapman Stick, and all kinds of amps and processors and the like in tripping distance – being trained musicians, this struck us all as kind of "Obviously you're not a golfer" odd. Sean and I did our best not to goose Mike about where in the musical guitar-bass-drums trinity his visitor thought his 4-strings-is-less-than-6 avocation fell.

An… austere version of one of these..

The eclectic sampling from Mike's abode made a little more sense on sight of the rest of the stash. The visitor had, among other items in his collection, several huge Igloo coolers (not the free-with-complementary-siding-estimate size, but the kind medium-build folks could hide in), a mini trail bike that I believe I heard was stolen from the Mr. 2nd's Bargain Outlet on Erie Blvd., and 50 pairs of fireman boots – all proof that, when you do (certainly the wrong) drugs, you're not in your best state of mind.