Celebrate New Year's Eve Differently This Year NEW YEAR'S EVE BALL Sunday - December 31st Hilton Rialto Hotel - Melbourne Entertainment From National Recording Artist: NICK COLIONNE & his band Click Here To Purchase New Year's Eve Ball Tickets Experience Nick and his 5 piece band playing his recent #1 song "Always Thinking Of You" and his latest single "If You Ask Me"...from the CD - Keepin It Cool. Plus...a DJ spinning Dance Party Music between band sets Dinner, Dancing, Entertainment....and more "Support The Groove" RESERVATIONS REQUIRED CALL 321-951-9310 ADVANCE TICKETS ONLY -- NO TICKETS WILL BE SOLD NIGHT OF EVENT. $99.00 per person For more information, Dinner Menu, and various other party details on this New Year's Eve event...Click on the links below: Ask about our "Romantic Couples Package" that includes: 2 Tickets, Room, Bottle of Champagne, Chocolate Covered Strawberries, Flowers..and more surprises. $349.00 per couple Call 321-951-9310. Part of the ticket proceeds to go towards supporting The Groove and it's Youth In Jazz Scholarship fund. Click Here To Purchase New Year's Eve Ball Tickets! Click Here To Purchase New Year's Eve Ball Tickets! ********************************************** |
| The Kenny Cohen Interview by Michael Zangari Kenny Cohen bites off a phrase of the blues he is singing, throws his head back and punctuates it with a smooth lead guitar, hitting the over- tones of the notes, bending them in and letting them go to accentuate the feelings behind them. The last note is out of scale and sweet and hangs in the quiet of the club like a teardrop off an eyelash. He swivels to his right and hugs a saxophone to his chest. He begins to blow, heavy breath-like lines that build and break. Then he is back into the vocal line with guitar for the ending. The audience is small but into his set. They clap and hoot as the song ends. A couple that has been slow dancing in the dark at the back kisses long, Cohen’s eyes are on them from the stage. He segues into something slower, but no less punchy. Something old made new. Something borrowed and jazzed. Something decidedly blue. Cohen is at Nancy’s Casablanca, 231 Minuteman Causeway in Cocoa Beach. Nancy’s is a funky little box car of a lounge rouged in soft red lights. The whole place is red. There is a fire engine red piano at the center of the bar and red ashtrays on the table. The low track lighting is red-filtered and throws rivers of red light through the club. The light pools around the tables. It reflects off the silver tinsel curtains that Cohen is playing in front of. It shimmies when the song ends. The applause scatter in. Cohen smiles. “What do you want to hear?” he says, making eye contact with the audience. He is as cool and casual as the host of a family reunion dinner. The Papa. Calling the shots. “Mose Allison” is the request from one of the tables. The club is small enough that the request is not yelled. Its conversational. He fingers through the cards in the Rolodex. "Yeah,” he says. Cohen’s got it, “I use to do something of his in a band I was in awhile back.” He flips through cards in the Rolodex again and finds the tune he is looking for. He goes through the loose stack of ZIP disks piled like cards on the sound mixer beside him. He gets the right one and slaps it into his deck. He trips the button and a backing track plays. It is studio recorded and carefully layered to pillow him as he jams. He plays off it, a classic call and response kind of thing with winds and guitar. Cohen has been doing music for well over 40 years. He’s got that kind of confidence in his playing. He has played with headliners like the Eagles, Carlos Santana, Rod Stewart and B.B. King. He was intimately involved in the Grammy nominated recording he did with Jacksonville’s Charles Waterford, the great jazz and blues vocalist. Cohen says of his music career, “It’s a life style.” And life goes on, bra. He recently played the 1965 Satellite Beach High School reunion where he is remembered locally as a member of the rock band, the Dimensions. “When I first came to Florida in 1962, I was in tenth grade. I had a band within the first few weeks of school. That was my mind set. I got into surfing and loved it. But I loved and wanted to play music. So here I was at the beginning of the east coast surf scene also playing music.” Cohen played in the school and marching bands. That is where Charmaine Burdett met him. She says things haven’t changed much for Cohen. She says he still has the same effect on people. That he still draws a loyal audience, most of them women. “Kenny has always been a good-looking guy and most of the girls had a crush on him - myself included. He was very popular,” she says. “Just recently I saw Kenny play at the Steve Miller Memorial Blues Bash at Lou's Blues - he was playing sax and walking through the club, upstairs and downstairs, playing. I thought it was great,” she said. “That's Kenny, he and the audience are one - it is not just him playing on stage and the audience listening. He caters to his audience - gets to know their names - takes requests – he is very personable. “ Cohen says he is blessed to have a family life that really encouraged him. “My dad has an affinity for music. When he was living in New York he always went to Harlem. He was a good-looking, popular man. Women loved him. He was good friends with Louie Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Billy Eckstein,” Cohen said. “When I was a child I heard names like Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Chic Web, Barney Begard, and Ray Nance--all these cats that I never knew were even important. I’d go to these shows as a baby and hang out back stage with the whole Duke Ellington Orchestra,” Cohen said. “Band members came over for dinner. I heard my whole life what a great tone Johnny Hodges had. So it wasn’t a big surprise when I picked up alto sax and had that sound.” Cohen’s solo act evolved out of his studio work. “I always worked with great players and we were always involved in the recording process,” he said. Cohen spends a lot of time in the studio alone and with friends. He has over two hundred songs that he does regularly. “There’s a kind of energy you only get from playing in front of an audience.” He said. “I care about everyone in the audience. I don’t discount anyone. I always either learn something I did not know about or become enlightened to something in the moment that I can be a part of. I keep my ears and eyes open. I don’t want to miss anything. I have to be part of the total process, the whole experience. Without the audience I can’t validate anything I am doing.” Although Cohen has been “accused of having great ears,” he says that his sound comes out of constant rehearsing. “I really was blessed with a gift but all I did was let it come out. I never met anyone who did anything well without doing it a lot.” He says a lot of great people taught him a lot of great things. He says he likes all kinds of music. He says he can play flute with a classical pianist or klezmer. He is unapologetic about his skill level or tastes. “I never met anyone that goes on stage or makes records to sound bad. I like punk rock. I like heavy metal. I like country. I like rap. I don’ t care. I appreciate it all. It’s all music to me. It serves a great purpose.” What’s coming up next for Cohen? “I’ve got to get a box of alto reeds” he said. “I’m thinking about what I’m playing tomorrow night. Everything I’m doing is the greatest thing I’ve ever done. I am hopeful and optimistic about things. It is ludicrous for to me to talk about the next great project. Anything can happen. When it’s my turn I will be taken to the place I’m supposed to be. I’ll have to do the footwork to get there, but I’ll be led. The greatest things in my life just happened. I did not plan them. I just paid attention to what was going on and reacted to them.” Back on stage he’s working the crowd like the Buddha under a Bodi tree or Billie Sunday in front of his tent. He notices little detail. Hooking into conversations. Stopping things. He talks to the people at the bar, the bartender. At the back of the bar the kiss that goes on forever is sweet and silent. And he gives in to that too, watching, for just a moment before he segues a song over it. Requests and dedications. It’s a life style, man. That’s it. He picks up his saxophone, hugs it too his chest and kisses it while the high hat sizzles. You can find out more about Kenny Cohen at http:// kennycohen.com |
| Jazz and Blues Click for more MORE JAZZ |
Charmaine Burdett
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