The horns have been busy in the studio with many different projects. This week Adam Joe and Mike recorded on 3 more songs for Lyrics Born’s new album which will be finished by the end of August and out shortly after on Epitaph. This was the third session the horns have done for this particular album and there is possibly one more so look for the horns on many songs on the joint. Also Adam has co-writing on collaborations created with him and LB. One of the tracks recorded this week also features Chali2na from Jurrassic 5!

J Boogie is another Bay Area legend that the Mafia has been collaborating with a lot this year, live as well as in the studio. J Boogie who has celebrated dozens of releses on OM and Ubiquity records, is featuring the Jazz Mafia horns a lot on his new record which will be out in early 2008. tracks include the horns teaming up with Goapele, Rebirth, Zeph and Azeem, Aima, Jennifer Johns, DJ Vadim and many more that I forget right now.

Crown City Rockers has enlisted JM Horns for a few tracks on their current studio extravaganza which incudes some amazing production work.

Other projects on the roster include collabs with: DJ PLaturn (Oakland Faders), Edaboss (Oakland Faders), 808 Band, Max Kayne (4ONeFunk)…

On July 13th and 14th The Shotgun Wedding Hip-Hop Symphony and Brass Mafia performed at Moody’s Outdoor Stage in Truckee, CA for the Jazz Camp and Festival that owner JJ Morgan presents every year. During the week Adam Theis and Joe Cohen led the Jazz Camp along with fellow instructors Josh Jones and Will Bernard. This year the number of students was in the 60s! Every night the faculty performed concerts at Moody’s.

The weeknight faculty concerts went smoothly considering the band consisted of members from all over the country that had a few hours to rehearse for the whole week. The turnout was solid and the band played a wide variety of originals, arrangements and some standards. When the weekend rolled around things got really rowdy and moved to the outdoor stage at Moody’s. The festival venue was packed both Friday and Saturday nights to a capacity of two to three hundred people each night. Brass Mafia played a set to warm up the night then Shotgun went on with the full 13 piece Symphony and played the set they were rehearsing for the Independent CD Release party the following week. After the show more jamming happened down the street at Passtime Club with a great Reno band called Kaiser Soze and that was followed by street horn hip-hop jams and that was followed by a parade of horns and drunkards to the river house which led to more craziness.

The bands had a great time up in paradise. Dublin bought a bunch of stakes off some guy at a gas station selling them out of the back of his truck. Dub grilled them up with some oyesters and had a great meal on Saturday in between soaking in the Truckee River. Sunday some of the guys went out on a boat on Tahoe with Chicken and Shaggy, which is now a 3 year tradition as well. Gootimes y’all!

Below is the River house in downtown Truckee. It is one of the two houses we stayed at.

On Friday, July 20th The Shotgun Wedding Quintet performed to a sold-out house at the Independent in San Francisco. Also performing were Crown City Rockers, Four One Phonics, Willow the Gaslamp Killer, Aspect McCarthy and host Kirby Dominant in a stylin’ Velvet (not Velour) suit.

The Shotgun set featured the full 13 piece Shotgun Symphony  including Evan Francis, Marcus Stephens, Anthony Coleman, George Ban-Weiss, Shaw-Pong Liu, Carolyn Balfe, Charith Premawadhana, Robin Renolds and the Quintet. Eric Garland, the original drummer from Shotgun and the drummer on the album, also sat in on a tune.

The venue sold out by 11pm which created some complications, since there was still a line of over a hundred fans outside going down the sidewalk. Our apologies to those friends of ours that weren’t able to get in but at least the club wasn’t empty. We had over 600 people packed in that place and it was hot, sweaty and cozy.