Exclusive Video Premiere: Con Brio Performs ‘I Wanna’ At Fantasy Studios

In 1971 the Fantasy Records imprint built Fantasy Studios, a private facility in Berkeley, California. Fantasy Studios opened to the public in 1980. Green Day’s Dookie, Sailing The Seas Of Cheese by Primus, Blues Traveler’s Four, Journey’s Escape and Santana’s Supernatural are just a few of the iconic albums recorded at Fantasy Studios over the past 47 years. Sadly, the studio’s owners recently revealed they will shut down the legendary facility next month. The Bay Area’s own Con Brio performed at Fantasy Studios earlier this summer. JamBase is pleased to premiere video featuring a song from the group’s session.

Con Brio’s Fantasy Studios session was presented by doubleOone in front of approximately 25 fans on June 27. The band played three songs including “I Wanna” off their recently released sophomore studio album Explorer and then hung and drank with those lucky enough to attend before repeating the cycle of performing and hanging a second time.

Vocalist Ziek McCarter shared the following about his experience:

“Playing Fantasy studios felt like a dope party with our family, friends and fans, in a ’70s dream. It was such an awesome opportunity to add to our treasure of experiences in The Bay. Not to mention, scheduling this session here being the epitome of “a blessing in disguise.” I unfortunately got terribly sick and had to cancel our original show (for the first time ever) at 25th Street Recording to rest my voice and body. However, in retrospect, it’s so amazing that resulted in landing the opportunity to reschedule and play Fantasy for our first time. It’s a little sad this live performance will be our first and last time there as a band, but I’m so happy and grateful we had the opportunity to create this special night for us and our fans just before our international tour took off and our album Explorer was released.”

“The first time I recorded at Fantasy Studios was in 2012 with the Nu Jazz Ensemble directed by Myra Melford. It was a dream experience, I remember our pianist was ecstatic to be able to record our album using a piano owned by Bill Evans. I remember just loving the warmth of everyone’s sound in Studio D, you could hear all the nuances of everyone’s playing and still get separation for mixing,” trumpeter Brendan Liu told JamBase about his history with the famed facility. “Since then I’ve had the honor of recording at Fantasy several times with projects of my own as well as with others, in all different genres of music. And that’s sort of what Fantasy is all about. It has been a testament to the diversity and quality of the Bay Area music scene, as well as to the musical world at large.”

Liu was also moved by Con Brio’s session at Fantasy Studios, “It was an amazing experience, to combine the energy of our show with the warmth of the people, there was a lot of love in the room. At the end of the night our session engineer, Jesse, said to me, ‘We need to get you back in here to record a real album.’ Shortly after that night, I was really heartbroken when I learned they’d be closing.”

Watch Con Brio’s performance of “I Wanna” from Fantasy Studios:

Stay tuned to the band’s YouTube channel for more from their Fantasy Studios session.