ON A RECENT Wednesday night, something funny happened to about 250 people at exactly 7:15 p.m.
Prior to that moment, these folks were merely chatting, ordering drinks, eating plates of chicken wings and picking at deli platters, working on getting over the hump of the week, crammed into the Meeting Place (1707 L St. NW; 202/293-7755) for your basic Wednesday happy hour scene.
Then, all together, everyone's head was bobbing and hips started waggling back and forth.
Spur of the Moment had begun its set, the first of three it would play that night. This area quintet has what their friend on the local funk/jazz/soul scene, Marcus Johnson, calls "the neck factor." That's the thing in a band's music that gets people working their necks in time to the music, music so infectious that folks can't help shaking their bodies in time with it.
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Wednesdays at the Meeting Place -- a nondescript basement bar -- have been a Spur of the Moment event for five years. "We've been blessed to have a good following down at the Meeting Place," says guitarist and band co-founder Wayne Bruce. "It's always a good time there." He's talking to me from his cell phone on his way to Constitution Hall, where he's sitting in as part of Maysa's band, on the Rachelle Ferrell bill.
"The band plays with a lot of people that come through here," Bruce says. "Will Downing, Miki Howard, Angela Bofill. Back in August we were blessed to be able to do a live concert on WHUR, called 'Spur and Friends,' with George Benson, Will Downing, Maysa, Walter Beasley, and it was amazing, because we played almost all our stuff, and they were playing with us!" You can practically hear Bruce shaking his head on the other end of the phone. Benson is one of his biggest influences on guitar, and playing with one of his heroes definitely left an impression on Bruce.
Hearing Spur of the Moment, it's no surprise the band's in demand with some of the hottest soul singers out there. It's one of the tightest groups I've ever heard, able to romp through a go-go explosion or lay back on a melancholy ballad with equal finesse.
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For an added bonus, you get the fact that the band is obviously having a ball playing its music. At the Meeting Place, every song was accompanied (at some point during the course of its playing) by grins from member to member, reactions to musical messages being passed from one instrument to another. It's contagious watching that kind of interaction, and one reason I love live music.
Bruce, a Washington native, met all of his bandmates while at the University of Maryland in College Park. He was in the student government and president of his fraternity and had put aside his love of guitar while he pondered his future. "But people knew me and kept asking me to put a band together for various events," he says. "And there was this same group of guys I'd keep calling on to play, I'd call 'em at the spur of the moment for a gig that night, and it would always work out."
Thus a band (and a band name) was born.
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The group didn't become a full-time thing until 1989, a few years after everyone had graduated. By then, the steady stream of gigs let them know that there was an audience for their brand of music. "Spur of the Moment is a music band in the way War was a music band," Bruce explains. "We tend to not want to call it jazz, because it's got such a wide variety of music. It's got a little bit of everything: R&B, funk, hip-hop, go-go, pop. And with Kenny singing a lot more vocals now than he used to, we can cross all kinds of lines."
Share this articleShareKenny is Kenny Allen, who plays keyboards as well as sings, and he and Bruce are joined by musical comrades Brian Lenair (saxophone), Eric "Boo Boo" Butler (bass), Kevin Prince (percussion) and Wardell Thomas (drums). Together they've released two CDs on their own SOTM Records, the most current of which, "Out of the Shadows," is being distributed by Marcus Johnson's Marimelj label. "I think this area -- with Marcus Johnson, David Dyson, the Graingers, Maysa, Spur of the Moment and some of the others -- this area's got to be contended with in the R&B/jazz area," Bruce says. "We're going to help make it happen."
The world can be divided into two kinds of people, I always say. Those folks who get frustrated at the sketchy audio signal of AM radio and those that love it. I love it. That thin, crackly sound coming out of my speakers makes me all giddy for some "golden age of radio" I wasn't alive to hear.
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It's that golden age that inspired Van Williamson to create "Radio From Downtown," a variety show that's been broadcast from inside the lovely deco Avalon Theater in Easton, Md. (40 East Dover St.; 410/822-0345), every other month for the past six years. "I had a vision in my head of how it should be," says Williamson, a longtime radio man, currently a producer and director for NPR's "Morning Edition." "I wanted to create an entertaining radio show like in the '40s, with some of this, some of that. A true variety show. Maybe mixing 'Bob and Ray' with 'The Shadow' and live music, all that."
He brought that vision to fruition on the Eastern Shore, but Saturday's performance will mark the last for a while, as Williamson takes a hiatus to consider the future of "Radio From Downtown," a future that may mean leaving Easton. That's a shame, because in many ways, that Delmarva town's out-of-time feel is perfect for what Williamson's doing, and the restored Avalon (which can hold 400 people) is a stunning little venue. But the small-town aspect of Easton that makes it such an apt locale (like a genuine Lake Wobegon) is the same thing that may send "RFD" away.
"I think we've hit a level beyond which we cannot go if we stay at the Avalon," Williamson says. "There are only so many people around there, and only so many trekking from the western shore as well. We've got a really great core audience, but in order for the show to grow financially and artistically, we'll have to start looking at ways to attract a larger audience. That may entail taking it on the road, like a Chautauqua kind of thing, or finding a home base in a larger venue in a larger city."
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"RFD," as it's commonly called by Williamson and his low-key cohorts, evolved from a show Williamson did on WSCL, a Salisbury station, in 1989. He was news director there but wanted to do a live radio show. Since he played some jazz guitar, he rounded up some fellow musicians, and they'd play a set of music in the studio, then chatter and joke, then spin some records. First called "Tonight's Radio Program," it evolved into "Radio Free Delmarva," and when new station management pulled the plug, Williamson shopped around for another space, found the Avalon and started "Radio From Downtown."
Every show includes local musical guests and a humorous radio play written by Williamson, Jack Purdy and the members of the loosely knit Delmarva Players. "We've developed a whole universe of Delmarva characters," Williamson says. "We've written maybe 60 of these radio stories, so we're not going to let that just fade away. We'll keep it going somewhere." I know I don't want to lose track of fictional Delmarva detective Biff Delmar. (Members of the Delmarva Players include NPR's Susan Stamberg and Carl Kassel, both of whom will be on hand Saturday.)
Also on stage Saturday will be the house band, Swing Shift (not the Washington band of the same name), the Uptown Vocal Jazz Quartet, writer Tom Horton, champion goose caller John Taylor and others.
For tickets ($18), call Ticketmaster (202/432-7328) or the Avalon (410/822-0345). The final show will be broadcast on a couple of Delmarva stations, WCEI (1460 AM) and WKHS (90.5 FM), and will be videotaped and shown on local public access channels around the peninsula.
Anne Watts & Boister perform at "Radio From Downtown."Spur of the Moment jazzes up happy hour at the Meeting Place in Northwest.
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