BY LAYLI WHYTE
Staff Writer
CHRIS KELLY staff The Red Bank-based band Woodfish has recorded a CD on its own Meanfish Records label. With the release of their first album, Red Bank-based band Woodfish says it’s all about the experience. “Bamm Diddley,” Woodfish’s premier album released on the band’s independent label, Meanfish Records, has been a year in the making, and expresses the band’s wish to bring listeners to another state, one in which only the music exists.
“It’s a shared experience,” said Steve Kalorin, bass player for the band, “between us and the audience.”
Vocalist Justin Newport agrees.
“I just try to give a piece of myself away,” he said. “I let them [the audience] have a piece of me, and I take a piece of them. I try to remember that when I’m writing.”
The shared experience between the band and the audience is even expressed in the band’s name.
A woodfish is a gong used in American Indian meditation to call the practitioner back from his or her altered state.
“People will come up to me after a show and ask me about a bass solo,” said Kalorin, “like how I came up with it. It’s like I’m in a state of meditation when I’m on stage playing. I want to have that experience along with the audience. I want the audience to leave not remembering anything other than the show, not even who they were standing next to.”
Newport said that each band member puts everything he has into the performance.
“We can’t move after a show,” he said. “We really lose it up there.”
The five-piece band, which also consists of Kalorin’s brother Dominic on drums, Steve Cumberland on guitar and Don “The Guy” Honeycutt on saxophone, has performed all over New Jersey, including locally at the Downtown Cafe, West Front Street, and the Stone Pony in Asbury Park.
Cumberland said that the band has tried to keep its sound fresh, describing its genre as “groove rock.”
“We’re a little ska,” he said, “a little rock, a little reggae.”
Depending on where we play, we try to cater to that audience a little, to give them what they want more of, but when we’re playing all night at a place like the Downtown, we’ll melt your face off.”
Steve Kalorin said the sound of Woodfish lies somewhere between Blues Traveler, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Phish, but that he believes the band has a sound all its own.
Newport is the newest member of the band, and he joined them from Oklahoma after reading an online ad for a vocalist that the band had posted.
“I had been playing in Oklahoma,” said Newport. “I had quit college to do music with some other guys out there, but I saw it was going nowhere. This was the third band I had checked out on the Internet. I packed up and lived in Steve’s loft.”
Kalorin said he was happy Newport worked out, because several people had auditioned before him, and it had not been the best experience.
“We had some guy fly in from L.A.,” he said, “and he was just terrible. I had such a good feeling about Justin that I told him to come for the weekend and stay in my loft. After the first couple of notes came out of his mouth, I thought, ‘Thank God,’ not for the band, but just for my weekend. It would have been awful if he had been bad and he was stuck to me all weekend.”
One of the people who auditioned for the vocalist spot who didn’t make the cut was Honeycutt.
“I tried out,” he said, “but I was new to this whole singing thing. I dropped the seed, though, before I left. I said, ‘Hey, I play horns, too.’ And damned if I didn’t get a call back to play with these guys.”
Band members all believe in working toward the goal of “no day jobs,” and Steve Kalorin made it clear that he doesn’t see that as a dream.
“For me,” he said, “it’s not really a dream. It’d be great to live the rock star fantasy, but I don’t think that will happen if it stays a dream. To me, a dream is something that you can’t accomplish.”
He also said that had it not been for their day jobs, “Bamm Diddley” may never have seen the light of day, since it was financed entirely by the band.
Working with a producer in Long Island, the band owns its own masters, which is a boon in the music industry.
“It’s been a lot of hard work,” said Steven Kalorin.
“Bamm Diddley” is available online at cdbaby.com and at Jack’s Music in Red Bank. The band is currently working on increasing its distribution.
Woodfish will be performing and promoting “Bamm Diddley” in the area, including its June 28 and July 15 shows at the Stone Pony
On June 29, Woodfish will be opening for Particle at the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville.
More information about Woodfish and upcoming shows is available at the band’s Web site: www.woodfishmusic.
com.