Two Against Nature - Steely Dan cover by Jim Wilkas
Jim Wilkas - Vocal, keyboards, clarinet, tenor sax, bass clarinet, trombone, drum programming
Joe Mendicino - guitars
Gary Badger - trumpet
Marilee Wilkas-Ciarlo - backing vocals

Two Against Nature

Two Against Nature - Steely Dan cover by Jim Wilkas

These songs were completely improvised on September 23, 2022 at the Varuna North studio in York. PA. Groovatine is a loose collection of musicians that congregate periodically to improvise groovy music.

The compositional inspiration for these tracks is the music of the band Khruangbin, which has perfected a very appealing chill music vibe. 

These sessions are captured and posted on SoundCloud and sometimes video is posted on YouTube. The musicians for this session include Quinn Slonaker on Bass, Jamie Smucker on Drums,  Roy Smith on Guitar Synthesizer, and miscellaneous overdubs.

Honey

Second Arrangement Recreated

Now with added guitars, horns and background vocals.
Jacqui Abrahams & Tasmin Wright-Taylor - Additional vocals
https://soundcloud.com/roysmith - Additional guitars

The Bear (Jive Miguel Mix 2)

These songs were completely improvised on 11-17-2023 at the Varuna North studio in York. PA. Groovatine is a loose collection of musicians that congregate periodically to improvise groovy music.

These sessions are captured and posted on SoundCloud and sometimes video is posted on YouTube. The musicians for this session include Ralph Washington on Keys, Quinn Slonaker on Bass, Louis Woodyard on hand percussion, Trev Williams on Drums and Roy Smith on Guitar, Keys and Bass.

Due to technical difficulties, the sound quality of this set is not up to Groovatine's normal level, however the music is compelling enough that we wanted to present it even in a compromised form.

Release date:
18-Nov-2023

Shake It Then Bake It

Tasmin Wright-Taylor & Lani Garcia - Additional vocals
Roy Smith - Additional guitars
https://soundcloud.com/roysmith

Special thanks to Pipedream (https://www.youtube.com/@canaconn2388) & https://www.youtube.com/@SirMixALotRareMusic for sharing their Donald Fagen models,  and to Michael Caplin, monkey & adriii for sharing the knowledge.

Steely Dan - I Can't Write Home About You (Jive Miguel Mix)

This track is the latest of my "Virtual Collaborations", music created with wonderful musicians I find on the Internet but have never met in person. Calaminus is a prolific composer of very good funk-fusion-jazz music and you can find his original version of this song on his soundcloud.  On this track, I played 8 string bass, lead and rhythm guitars.  Everything else is Calaminus. Enjoy!

Mood Of Blue - Calaminus Feat.Roy Smith -

A set of completely improvised music from Groovatine. Improvised on 12-28-2015 by Ralph Washington, Quinn Slonaker, Trev Williams, Louis Woodyard and Roy Smith.

Video of this improv is at https://youtu.be/I7yY9Ddic_4

SlipTown

"Neon Bubbles" derived from an extended jam session, the first jam I had since a long time.  It was such a big fun to play along with the groove and over the first basic chord progressions for more than 2 hours that I decided to develop a complete track out of it.

Hope you will have some fun listening to the final version as well...

"Neon Bubbles" also is another addition to my "Light Series" (https://soundcloud.com/calaminus-music/sets/calaminus-light-series) - a compilation of original music tunes which may send you into transports of delight.

Light Series

Neon Bubbles

Neon Bubbles | Light Series No 3

Referring to one recent representative survey
almost 50% of the german population
feels stressed in the pre-Christmas period.

As this fact may be transferable to many other socalled developed economies (like the UK, the US eg) we are in a progress of rush
particularly in the last weeks of every year.

Instead of all the haste and hurry we should SLOW DOWN
at least a bit to take care of ourselves
and to pause for a moment.

As this uptempo tune does...

End of this year 2019 I wish all of you
the relaxing feel of coming down
to yourself, to the ones you love and to a moment of peace.

Yours,
Calaminus

Slow Down

Literally a track that has it ALL IN...

Effort, (play) time, instruments, choir, patterns, riffs, breaks, groove, ups 'n'downs,  phrases, melodies, solos, progressions, changes, harmonies, a beginning and an end...

and hopefully some listening pleasures.

While creating this one it was hard to stop and come to an end. Could have easily be much longer and progressing further, but that would have been an overkill. Perhaps.

Thanks for taking the time to listen, comment and share in advance.

---
ALL INstruments played, arranged, recorded, mixed by Calaminus
licenced under Creative Commons 2020

All In

I've played guitar and bass most of my life, in a wide variety of styles and genres, typically as a session producer and/or musician. During the 80's I worked in Philadelphia as a session musician on albums by Teddy Pendergrass, Patti Labelle, Lou Rawls, Pieces of a Dream, The O'Jays, and the Jones Girls. I've recorded and produced hundreds of projects ranging from demos to a top ten charting song co written with Cynthia Biggs and Dexter Wansel.  I tend to favor harmonically complex music that's underpinned by great grooves, and I often hear the comment that my music is reminscent of Steely Dan.   For the past 20 years, I've focused on helping startup high tech companies and on writing, producing and recording music at Varuna Studio, my 24 track automated home studio.

Honey

RoySmith

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