A couple of years ago, I got a bit fed up with the whole ‘24/7’ self-promotion / social media content-provider web presence fandango one was supposed to be engaged in as a musician, and decided to duck out for a while and pull together something more localised and time-manageable.

I had a set of material for which I had never really found a good home in other projects, and I decided to rejig these tunes a little to suit the following carefully limited specification;

 1   Suitable for a jazz-based four or five piece band with sax, guitar, keys, bass, drums.
 2   Approachable enough to attract a small, regular audience to an upstairs room in a Midlands market town boozer on a wet Wednesday evening.
3    Easily memorable tunes that could pass the ‘whistle test’ for an audience to pick up on.
4    Easily understandable structures for an audience (and the band!) to grasp (usually head, head, solos, head – the classic jazz formula).
5    Solo sections that move through key-changes to add a dash of high-wire thrillz for the soloists.

So nothing wildly ambitious. This was to be – to paraphrase the League of Gentlemen – a local band for local people.

I recorded a set of demos for the band consisting of sax, bass, keys & drum loops, scored the accompanying lead-sheets (tunes, chords, song structures), recruited a clutch of excellent musicians from around the region and set to work.

Anywaaay……

To cut a too long story very short, there actually didn’t seem to be any upstairs rooms in any Midlands market town boozers interested in a local band playing jazz-based material for local people on a wet Wednesday evening…..so, inevitably, the band folded.

The players:
John Calcott & Tim Smith: guitars
Colin Myers: bass
Benny Benko: drums
Jon Seagroatt: saxes, keys, hand percussion, production

The Beat Combo

A couple of years ago, I got a bit fed up with the whole ‘24/7’ self-promotion / social media content-provider web presence fandango one was supposed to be engaged in as a musician, and decided to duck out for a while and pull together something more localised and time-manageable.

I had a set of material for which I had never really found a good home in other projects, and I decided to rejig these tunes a little to suit the following carefully limited specification;

 1   Suitable for a jazz-based four or five piece band with sax, guitar, keys, bass, drums.
 2   Approachable enough to attract a small, regular audience to an upstairs room in a Midlands market town boozer on a wet Wednesday evening.
3    Easily memorable tunes that could pass the ‘whistle test’ for an audience to pick up on.
4    Easily understandable structures for an audience (and the band!) to grasp (usually head, head, solos, head – the classic jazz formula).
5    Solo sections that move through key-changes to add a dash of high-wire thrillz for the soloists.

So nothing wildly ambitious. This was to be – to paraphrase the League of Gentlemen – a local band for local people.

I recorded a set of demos for the band consisting of sax, bass, keys & drum loops, scored the accompanying lead-sheets (tunes, chords, song structures), recruited a clutch of excellent musicians from around the region and set to work.

Anywaaay……

To cut a too long story very short, there actually didn’t seem to be any upstairs rooms in any Midlands market town boozers interested in a local band playing jazz-based material for local people on a wet Wednesday evening…..so, inevitably, the band folded.

The Beat Combo - Sparkle

The Beat Combo - Swam in the Moon

The Beat Combo - Old Skool

The Beat Combo - Bat, Bear or Tiny King

Jon Seagroatt plays variously bass, flute, soprano & tenor saxes, bass clarinet, percussion, keyboards, electronics and the occasional bit of wobbly trombone with a variety of ensembles and groups that have included Comus, Current 93, Red Square, B So glObal & Circuit.
He also works as a session player, recording engineer and producer. In one or another of the above guises, Jon has toured, recorded and performed in Britain, Europe and the Far East.