Cannonball

Founded in Early 1997 the band Cannonball is one of the earliest threads of what is now known as the San Francisco Jazz Mafia. Cannonball was founded by Adam Theis while attending Sonoma State University and featured many university jazz majors who were all looking for an outlet to perform Jazz amidst the culturally homogenous suburban sprawl of Santa Rosa.

The original lineup included Bob Crarford (Los Angelitos, Crossfire Crew, Spearhead), Rita Thies, Andrew Emer (The Navigators), Jason Robinson as well as Paul Spina and Dave Chachere who are still members 9 years later! The band found a niche performing repertoire inspired directly by the groove-based music of the Julian “Cannonball” Adderley’s Quintet from the 60s and 70s. During a performance at Blake’s in Berkeley, professional skateboarder Ron Allen a.k.a. MC intelligence was invited to sit in with the band on a song. Intelligence was the first vocalist to take the stage with the band which was intentionally started as an instrumental concept; Intelligence smoked the microphone and brought smiles all around the stage. Ron was asked to join the band and remained for 3 years until mid 2000. MC intelligence is featured on Cannonball “Funky Soul” and on the 1999 release “A Funky Christmas with Cannonball and Friends”.
In the 80s and 90s, “Jazz” in the North Bay Area was hard to find except for some background music in cafes and restaurants and some corporate sponsored festivals.

Part of the appeal of Cannonball in the first year of it’s existence was that the music was energetic and entertaining enough (oh yea, and LOUD enough!) to perform in a “club” and at the same time could keep hardcore jazz fans interested. In the first year of performing, Cannonball played many of the Sonoma County rock venues, building up a grassroots following and taking the notice of much of the local press. (Well, two newspapers that is.) After about a year of playing together, the band recorded and released it’s first album, “Funky Soul Music” released on Josh Staples’ “Flying Harold Records” which also released such Bay Area CDs as Eric Lindell, The Conspiracy and The Velvet Teen.

The songs on the first Cannonball CD consist of 7 Adderley Quintet tunes, two Theis originals and two other Soul-Jazz covers. The album was recorded Live in front of a studio audience, a recording technique Theis would later go on to utilize more extensively with later Jazz Mafia releases. The album sold thousands of copies and will eventually be made available again through jazzmafia.com.

Towards the end of the 90s Cannonball started to play to a wider, yet still regional fan-base including regular shows in San Francisco (Up & Down Club), San Jose (Agenda) and Berkeley (Blake’s). Around this time the most current Cannonball lineup came to form by the addition of amazingly gifted bass and trumpet player, rapper and composer Ryan Newman. Also, replacing Adam’s longtime musical collaborator, pianist Jason Sherbundy was Marcus Urani, who has become known as an expert on the music of Herbie Hancock and was a big reason for the annual Cannonball “Birthday tribute to Herbie Hancock”. After releasing the 12 song cult hit Holiday Album “A Funky Christmas” in 1999 with the new lineup including Jazz Mafia collaborator Joe Cohen, Cannonball started work on their 2nd full length album “Hiphopulation”. In comparison to “Funky Soul”, which took only one month to record, mix and master, “Hiphopulation” took almost a year from start to finish. Recorded in the studio at Grizzly in Petaluma, the band found itself logging over a 500 hours in the dark dens of Roger Tschanns’ untidy recording facility all of which was paid for by the sales from the first record. On Hiphopluation the band features a wide array of guest artists including numerous rappers; MC Reign, Nemesis, Stolli, Jebediah, Sam I Am all collaborated on different tunes. Some of the most memorable vocal sessions were tracked by a skinny Irish rapper from Santa Rosa that most of of the band had just met through recent addition to the band, DJ Aspect. Aspect’s friend Dublin came into the studio and threw down each of his tunes in less than 3 takes per song. One tune, “Storm drain”, essentially a 4 minute non-stop stream-of-conciousness written rap, was completed in one take, taking a pause in the middle to catch his breath! Dublin was asked to join the band soon after the album was released and has been a member since.

Hiphopulation is an incredibly eclectic album featuring the Cannonball horns playing over tons of different grooves, experimentations with electronic and acoustic music, programming, big band arrangements, turntablism, vocal orchestration and most noticeably a majority of original compositions by EVERY member of the band. The band’s sound by this time was getting more and more eclectic and was achieving a sound less derivative of the 60s/70s Jazz/Bogaloo vibe of the first record.

Although Hiphopulation is an impressive record to most musicians, it proved to be way too eclectic to make a strong imprint and lift the band to a much higher level of recognition. The band’s live performances however, became tighter and tighter as the players seemed to bond through the new much more complicated material that they developed through their year in the studio. In addition, the bands live lineup began to incorporate new vocalist Dublin in many interesting ways and brought a strong focus to the band’s highly eclectic sound, something that the album “Hiphopulation” failed in many ways to do. the new live show Interspersed the action packed vocal sets with burning instrumentals, intricate medleys and segues and took the art of Freestyle Rhyming to new levels with games like “The Bag” or “Freestyle Jeopardy”. In “Jeopardy” Dublin would be presented with strange and esoteric freestyle topics; after selecting one, much to the audiences amazement, he would often create a whole story tied together with unpredictable rhymes and comedy, all in real time.

Cannonball was one of the most well-known Jazz/Hip-Hop groups in the San Francisco area from about 1999 til 2004, things started to get more difficult for the band after half it’s members ended up living in San Francisco while the other half were still located in Sonoma County. In addition to location, band members were all becoming increasingly involved in other projects. The North Bay part of the band (Paul Spina, Ryan Newman and Marcus Urani) along with trumpeter Dave Cachere joined a Reggae band that started touring frequently making it increasingly difficult to schedule shows in the continuing years, The other half of the band (Adam Theis, Joe Cohen, DJ Aspect and Dublin) founded over a dozen projects including Realistic, DragnaslimDublin and the Beat Cave Hermit, of 1942, the Shotgun Wedding Quintet and Realistic Orchestra. These bands have since become known as the San Francisco “Jazz Mafia”.

In 2004, amidst very busy schedules, three days of recording time was booked. Cannonball recorded all the tracks for the band’s third full length studio album “From Nightfall til Sun up” and the record was mixed and mastered in one month. Rather than try to create something as ambitious as Hiphopulation, the band opted for a sound based more on the material that they had developed over the 3 years of performing hundreds of club gigs around the Bay Area. Most of the tracks feature vocalist Dublin extensively and take a more back-beat oriented approach rooted in “Post Herbie Hancock” jazz/funk music. Dublin’s performances on the record include a high level of writing ability, incredible lyrical delivery and a knack for subtle humor which have become known as his trademark sound. The album also includes memorable bonus tracks “Yertle The Turtle” and a write-in freestyle topics game for Dublin recorded live in the studio.

Catching a live Cannonball performance these days is a rare experience, and many people have had great difficulty locating the back catalogue and even the newest CD. Now through the store at www.jazzmafia.com one can purchase all the Cannonball albums and checkout where many of the ideas for bands like the Shotgun Wedding Quintet and Realistic Orchestra started.
November, 2005