Artist description Smokin grooves slaped up against snakin sax lines

Music Style Way crazy rockin jazz for 21st century global dancers

Musical Influences every thing we ever ran into

Similar Artists don't get me started

Artist History To make a long story short, Go Van Gogh is the latest version of the band alto and soprano saxophonist Connie Walkershaw has been building for the last 15 years. She's been at it long enough to have gotten it right several times. Connie got her professional start in her fathers band, playing music for belly dancers in cafes and clubs up and down the West Coast. By the time she was out of high school she had worked her way through a variety of Jazz and Rock bands, and was ready to put her many influences together in a single project. In late 1982 Connie formed Jungle Dinner, an early World Beat dance band. Connie took a striped down version of the group to Europe in 1985, togetherwith bassist Jesse Walkershaw, and top girl drummer Scott Free. The possibilities glimpsed overseas would prove to be a pivotal factor in Connie's development. Upon returning to San Francisco in mid 1986, Connie put together her first purely instrumental project. Keeping Jesse Walkershaw on bass, and bringing in the timbale tommed Ian Varieli on drums. The new band, Comic Book Opera, had a sound like nothing heard before. With its wide range of musical ideas stretching from Macedonian Gypsy laments to hypersonic moshpit Thrash, rounded out with the modal melodiusness of Miles Davis's John Coltrane period, the group soon spurred their Rock contemporaries to reexamine there own roles in music, and can be seen as a seminal influencesof today's burgeoning San Francisco Jazz scene. Comic Book Opera's ejaculatory first record still sounds as fresh today as it did 10 years ago. Themajor difference being the listener ear has had a chance to catch up with Ms Walkershaw. By Early 1989, things were not moving fast enough in San Francisco. Comic Book Opera was too much an entity of its own, and with no movement to pull players from, it was impossible to take the steps needed to bring the music to the next level, so the band relocated to New York City. New York, with its downtown improvisers and uptown traditionalists, provided a rich soil for Connie's compositional ideas. Fielding a variety ofquartets and trios under the Comic Book Opera banner, Connie worked New York for all it had to offer. The band played the Knitting Factory, and was the only Jazz band to ever be banned from CBGB's, but early 1992 found Connie homesick for the kicked back California ethnic music world she had grown up in. So the Walkershaws headed back to San Francisco. The town was much livelier upon their return, with all their old Punk cronies growing beards and playing Mingus and Monk, but Connie had a slightlynew take on where her music was going. Seeking a larger canvas, she returned to the quintet size of Jungle Dinner days, replacing the vocalistsrole with a violin, but keeping the alto/soprano, tenor, bass and drums, no guitar format. The end result was Go Van Gogh. Their 1995 debut on the Accretions label received excellent reviews in a wide variety of music publications (Jazz, World, Rock), and placed well in over a hundred radio markets. Go Van Gogh's last CD "ONE" is perhaps the finest synthesis of Jazz, World music, Pop sensibilities, and Punk energyever produced. Well you can get too much of a good thing, so sick of the world of ART music the Walkershaws pointed the band in a new direction. Now with a striped down quartet of Sax Bass Guitar and Drums, GVG is burning up the Internet with a twisted 60 spy movie go go via the middle east funky groovy sound that makes you move makes you shimmy, and makes you shake.

Group Members Connie Walkershaw Sax's Jesse Walkershaw Bass, Sam Tzitrin Guitar, Noh Bodie Drums & Percussion

Instruments Sax Bass Guitar Drums Percussion

Albums Go Van Gogh, One

Press Reviews CAKE #43 (Candy Issue)Satisfying and solid, Go Van Gogh is like a finely crafted terra cotta greeting card. ConnieWalkershaw slings jazzy hash with a cadre of tight talented musicians creating aspicey,sax-y, bass-y, sassy, sexy sound.Jazz Times (December 1995)The Eastern influence in jazz has been around long enough for people to start getting a littlemischievous with it. While other groups present there world influences with an almostpainstaking self-consciousness, GO VAN GOGH (Accretions ALP008,45:31) dresses themup and takes them out for a night on the town. Connie Walkershaw leads a two horn, oneviolin front line; scampering through Coltrane and Grappelli territory, through multinationalflavors ranging from Morocco to Sri Lanka. Set against stateside grooves, like on "ElginPark" it adds up to a belly-dancing good time.

Location San Francisco, ca - USA

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