By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Strictly Fine, the Michigan-based jazzy funk band, is ready to stand up tall and put on a show for the audience and Grounds for Thought on Sunday.
The three-man horn section and bassist all top six feet. They form the band’s frontline.
“We have a big presence up there,” said Rick Enrico Morrone, the band’s bass player. “We’re energetic, always dancing around. We have four vocalists. It’s gang vocals throughout the live show.” He said that “some people won’t be ready for us.”
That initial wariness doesn’t bother him. “With our energy and style, we tend to grab people and draw them in.”
Strictly Fine will perform at the downtown coffeeshop at 174 S. Main St. Sunday Feb 19 6-8 p.m. as part of the monthly concert series produced by Dustin Galish of BG Independent.
Strictly Fine launched five years ago.
Saxophonist Garrett Gaina had the idea of project that was “funky and fun and fresh, ” Morrone said.
He, trumpeter Dave Vessella, and trombonist and vocalist Chris Kendall were members of a large band that was going through some drama. When that band broke up, Gaina saw this as the time to make his vision a reality.
“He had a fire lit under his ass to really get this project going,” Vessella said during recent conference call with three members of the band. “We were all just drug along to do this.”
They already had tunes ready to go and were writing more. Within a few weeks they’d recorded an EP live in the studio.
“We were determined and then just hit the ground running,” Vessella said.
“We had a vision of what we wanted to do, and kind of puzzle pieced it together,” Kendall said.
And they had a name culled from a running text message that now includes about 3,600 possible band names.
The most prolific songwriter is the keyboard player Mike Harrison, who also sings lead and plays some guitar. “He’s a fantastic freelance songwriter,” Vessella said. He pulls songs that best fit Strictly Fine from his extensive output.
One of those set the tone for the band. In “Street Dog Woman,” he professes his love for a free-spirited woman he sees on the street.
The lyrics are “sexy and funky and funny,” Morrone said.
The band, which includes two drummers Sean Perlmutter and Eric Childress, is a collaborative effort. The band’s sound and attitude grew out of gigging together and hanging out together.
That included hanging out at the golf course during the pandemic. Jokes, snatches of tunes, and conversations, all served as inspiration for songs, Vessella said.
Those golf course songs form the spine of the band’s third album, now in production.
Strictly Fine’s sound is a blend of their personalities and sense of humor as well as a range of influences from Parliament Funkadelic to Frank Zappa to “jazz standards like something written by Erroll Garner” that could have been performed by Frank Sinatra.
“We run the gamut,” Vessella said.
Morrone said that after five years there’s a comfort level among the members. “It’s a lot more personal.”
“This new album we’re working,” he said, “is a great showcase of the silliness, but also the musicianship of the group as a whole.”
