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Imagine this: two very talented musicians who haven’t seen each other or played with each other since eighth grade, meeting up and reacquainting in the mother of all cities, NYC. And imagine their first gig as a duo being of all things a birthday tribute for Madonna! Growing up in New Jersey, Marco Benevento & Joe Russo used to each play in the Jazz Band at their middle school. They even once played together in Russo’s basement. Ah, the beginnings of greatness. I had the chance to briefly speak with this Dynamic Duo, at Boston’s Paradise Rock Club, right before their show that evening supporting The Slip. Just for the record the night was incredible and was also somewhat historic, being that this was the first time The Slip had ever performed with a horn section.
Marco Benevento first began his career in music with the Jazz Farmers, a Boston based band comprised of Berklee students, which is where Marco met some of the fellow musicians he still plays with to this day. Joe Russo’s first band was Fat Mama, originally formed in Colorado in 1995, and then transplanted to NYC in 2000. The pair actually reunited for the first time one night in Boston, technically Cambridge, at the world famous Lizard Lounge. They next saw each other in NYC, after they had both relocated there, at the Lansky Lounge, where Joe was playing with some friends of Marco’s from Berklee...
Benevento: I just ran into him by chance. It was like, you’re in New York, I’m in New York... shit, we’re in New York.
Sam: So when did the idea for the duo spring forth?
Russo: Well, we were doing this gig at a place called Tagine, for a couple of months maybe... every Thursday?
Benevento: Yeah, every Thursday at a place called Tagine, we did organ, drums, percussion and sax. Kind of started there, it’s a small Moroccan place, nice place.
Russo: That kind of faded out a little bit and then I got a call to do a gig at Wetlands for this Madonna Birthday Bash thing...
Sam: Yeah, I remember that! I didn’t go but...
Russo: ...To come out and do a couple Madonna songs. That’s when I thought of getting a band together. It was the night before and I was like I’ll just call Marco and see if he wants to do it.
Benevento: So I learned "Borderline" and "Open Your Heart," and we did the duo. That was our first duo gig. We got interviewed after that...
Russo: By a Madonna Documentary. [They both laugh]
Benevento: That was summer 2000, September maybe.
Russo: And then I guess, I got the offer to play at The Knit from Jake who used to do the Wetlands. He hooked me up with a bunch of gigs, and we tried a couple different things and then talked about doing just an organ and drum thing. Because they weren’t paying that much, so we were like, shit, we can each make 50 bucks, whatever, and have a good time. It didn’t really start out very serious, we were kind of like, well we didn’t have any tunes.
Benevento: We had some things from Tagine, we had some originals, some covers. And people came down and sat in at Tagine too, so some people came to the Tap Bar, because we had moved from there to the Tap Bar.
Russo: It just kind of rolled into this thing where most of the nights at first were mostly improv, you know, a few of Marco’s tunes, a couple covers, but then we would just kind of play and it was really fun, playing with one other person.
Sam: This is still 2000?
Russo: This is 2001, actually a year ago on Friday. Yeah, we started doing it, kind of started building a little bit of a rapport, Marco would hear a tune on the radio and be like dude, this sounds great and we would bring it in.
Benevento: Because I was definitely way into jazz at Berklee and I was definitely into that kind of thing. There were all these jazz tunes that we kind of changed a bit and changed the arrangements of and rocked ‘em out or made them, I don’t know, made them more... something...
Russo: ...duo-y.
Benevento: Duo-y, jazzy, jammy, rocky, and it just kind of snowballed.
Russo: Yeah, we started on Wednesday nights, then we moved to Thursdays.
Benevento: But over there it’s like great exposure too, because there are all these people wandering around. They’ll be like a Logic show upstairs...
Russo: Yeah, there’s all these different rooms and stuff.
Benevento: And then some people would come down and tape us. That was cool.
Sam: So you started off doing some jazz tunes and stuff, standards I would assume?
Benevento: We didn’t really start doing jazz tunes, we started really just doing improv tunes at the Tap Bar. And some original tunes. I had an un-arrangement of a Monk tune that I had back in the day. A Grant Green tune that I used to do back at Berklee.
Russo: We actually started doing a lot more rock covers. The one thing that people really loved was when we started doing “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” That was like our big crowd favorite. You know, we’ll play like Zeppelin and shit. We’re definitely down to rock.
Benevento: Yeah, I think we’re leaning in that direction. Compositionally speaking, that’s what I’m leaning towards. Writing more like simple rock tunes, Coldplay, like Zeppelin kind of vibe. Just getting really into that. It’s cool to see some band cover this tune that has words, just doing it instrumentally. The way we interpret anything, for that matter, is going to be different. Just because it’s the two of us, and even if we play it note for note then the solo section is going to be the way we interact with other, it’s just going to be completely different.
Russo: All the tunes are basically springboards for us to freak out and do whatever the hell we want. And that’s the thing again, it’s just so easy playing with Marco because we can just go wherever the hell we want and don’t have to think about it. We’ll both be looking down and be doing some weird shit and both land on something and we’ll just look up and smile or laugh. And that’s the best thing, it’s great to have the tune to get there. We really use the tune as a reason to interact.
Sam: So it started to pick up pace?
Benevento: Yeah it Started picking up pace.
Sam: And you would do it every week?
Benevento: We did it every week... 10 months, from January all the way through. And then around like June this guy Aaron Stein came and saw us and wrote an article about us.
Sam: On JamBase, "Organ & Drum Duo Rule NYC".
Benevento: And it was like, ever since then, that really helped a lot. And people would come out because they read the article. And I think that was the biggest thing at that point, to get people to be listening and coming down to check us out.
Russo: People started to come down and sit in. We had Krasno and Sam Kinninger (Soulive) and E. C. from Lettuce and Terry Angoli, and people like that. Cheme from Robert Walter's, Chuck McKinnon and Will Bernard... And I guess because of that, Marco got a call from High Sierra...
Benevento: No, actually not because of that. I know Dave [Margulies - partner in High Sierra]. I actually saw the Jacob Fred guys at the Knitting Factory and I’d been hearing so much about them and finally met them. Brian was like; "yeah you’re Marco I’ve heard about you from Brad and Andrew" (The Slip). They were like yeah, "we’re doing the High Sierra, it’s great, last year I did this Rhodes and drum thing with Andrew and it was just awesome." And I was like, "wow, High Sierra, I totally wanna do this," so I called up Dave and I was like "is there any way I can get in on this High Sierra thing?" And Dave was like "sure"... and it was just motivation to get Joe and I out there and back. And I actually booked our first tour across the country and back.
Sam: And when was that first tour, after High Sierra?
Benevento: It was during, it was like June and the Knit was starting to blow up and then by the end of June we left. Because High Sierra was like the 4th or the 5th of July, so we cruised out, we played Telluride Jazz Festival, we played the High Sierra festival, we played Chicago, Park City and all these other places.
Sam: Was this right after High Sierra?
Russo: This was, yeah, on the way we went through. It was basically the RT. 80 tour. Everything out, everything on the way back. And actually that was what I was thinking of when people would be coming out for this band that anybody even knows and it had a lot to do with the article. Because they were like "Oh, we read the article, you know?" We played Chicago and people were coming up and buying CD’s before we performed, they had never heard us at all.
Benevento: It was a different buzz, a unique thing, you know? Just a highly regarded buzz.
Sam: Because I remember reading the article and thinking this has gotta be good, because it’s just a duo, you know, to have this kind of buzz and people would come out...
Russo: I think we’ve also been lucky to have the support of great musicians like The Slip and Jacob Fred and all these people are like "Man, you guys gotta fucking do this," you know? People that we really respect kind of giving us a little pat on the back. Like do it you know, we dig it, people dig it. I think that was really big, just people really being excited for us and it really just helped us truck on.
Sam: So you came back from High Sierra and you played some shows across country a little bit?
Benevento: Yeah, we flew out and did the Telluride Jazz Festival. That was really fun. Then we went back to the Tap Bar! We played the Tap Bar all through the rest of August. Then we opened up for The Wailers at B.B. King Blues Club. And we played with Logic at Tobacco Road for the first time.
Russo: Started doing a lot of late night things.
Sam: So Logic sat in with you two on Turntables the whole night? That must have been cool.
Benevento: Yeah, it was cool.
Russo: Again, that was another thing where like really good musicians being excited to come do it with us.
Benevento: And then Joe went on tour with Robert Walters in September. Then he came back and we did a show at Tobacco Road and it was just great, you know? Just like we never left and got right back into it.
Sam: And when was all this?
Russo: It was October 5th. The night after we played with Robert at the Bowery and then me and Marco played a late night thing at Tobacco Road and it was just fucking amazing, it was one of our greatest gigs.
Benevento: Yeah, I thought that maybe Joe would go on the road and we would lose our momentum with the Tap Bar gigs, playing every week with people there and checking us out, you know? He was gone and it was like, oh man, you know, what’s going on, we’re gonna do this gig when he gets back...
[They both start to crack up]
Sam: And you ended the Robert Walter tour when?
Russo: That night, October 5th that was the last night.
Sam: And then back to the duo, Is this still a side project, or is this the main focus?
Both: No! No!
Russo: Pretty much yeah...
Benevento: I would say it’s a main focus, it’s...
Russo: It’s becoming...
Benevento: It’s becoming a main focus. It’s something that we would love to have be a main focus. At least I speak for myself. [They both laugh]
Benevento: [in sarcastic voice] Joe really wants it to be like this so I’m going along with him.
[They both laugh]
Benevento: No, I think it’s, you know, at the same time, we’ve only been a band for not even a year. We started at the Tap Bar, it was like whatever. We just hope to truck along and do bigger and better gigs and write more music and be connected with maybe some new musicians, new fans.
Our interview was cut short abruptly as the pair had to take the stage. Fellow music lovers, I cannot stress how important it is to go check these guys out when you get the chance. With this much buzz going on for a duo, there has to be something there. Let’s think for a minute about other duos that have created this kind of buzz. There’s Simon and Garfunkel, Kid N’ Play, Hall and Oates,, Penn and Teller, Eric B. and Rakim, Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach... well you get the idea. Basically, it seems to me, that when you keep hearing good things about a duo, you know there must be some good music involved.
Benevento and Russo will be around a lot this summer with repeat performances at High Sierra and Telluride Jazz Fest, the Adirondack Music Festival and possibly a tour of the South, there will be plenty of opportunities to check this magical pair out.
Later on in the evening, as Benevento and Russo took the stage, I really started to concentrate on the way they communicated with each other on stage. There is certainly something magic in the air when these guys play, they seem to have some kind of cosmic connection. Numerous times I would see Marco lift his head to laugh and I would catch Joe’s eye and see that he was in on the joke. They have such great communication on stage without saying a word. I played their CD for a few friends and when I asked each one how many people they thought were in the band, the closest answer to the truth I got was three. They sound like there could be anywhere from three to four members in this band, making the music they produce even more incredible when you realize there’s only two of them.
In conclusion, don’t miss this band! They’re coming to a town near you!
Interview by: Sam Katz
Images by: Greg Aiello
JamBase | Beantown
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