On Tuesday night, two men will be blowing their horns here in Central Oregon and both will be getting terribly funky. One specializes in the saxophone while the other favors the trombone but their styles both weave through the realms of jazz, soul and, again, the funkiest of funk.

There are plenty of other similarities to be found between these two men and their dance-happy sounds, but where they diverge is the 43-year age gap between them. The man on the saxophone is Maceo Parker, one of the forefathers of funk music, and the other is Trombone Shorty (real name: Troy Andrews) the 24-year-old New Orleans virtuoso who has already generated a mystique of his own, having burst onto the scene as a youth on his namesake instrument.

Quasi

American Gong
Kill Rock Stars Records

All along — when Janet Weiss and Sam Coomes weren’t busying themselves with Heatmiser and Sleater-Kinney and the Jicks, or being married and then being divorced — they were Quasi. So when they do occasionally choose to wear their Quasi pants, fans freak. On American Gong, Quasi’s eighth record, the band (now a trio) offers more of what makes people love them: out of nowhere jams, lullaby-choruses, sing-song rhymes and dissonant juxtapositions. In fact, it’s a bit of a show-off record—not hoity-toity, but a portfolio, almost, of everything they’re capable of. “Bye Bye Blackbird” starts as a contagious, loud-quiet-loud rock song, before shuffling off into an all-out jam session.

When Eric Tollefson released his full-length disc, Sum of Parts, last year, it seemed like the towering redhead had come out of nowhere. There’d been little buzz about him before the release, but soon after he couldn’t be avoided, opening shows for Jackie Greene and playing a hard-charging set to warm the stage for G. Love and Special Sauce in early September at the Domino Room.

While G. Love was on stage, Tollefson, wearing the Breedlove Guitars baseball cap that seems to be his constant around-town companion, was near the back of the crowd, leaning against the wall. On the Juneau, Alaska, native’s face was the sort of grin that comes only from really kicking ass at something, which is what he’d just done – even if he did make the mistake of addressing the blues-guitar playing, hip-hop-rhyme-spouting artist as “G” rather than his preferred “Garrett” when the two met backstage.

The name has been bouncing around the media consciousness of Bend for the last month or two. Radio. Websites. Newspapers. But mainly radio – lots of radio, a medium that lends itself well to the baritone pronunciation of a name like Joe Bonamassa, with its vowels and consonants so sexily colliding.

And when you combine the uttering of Joe Bonamassa (go ahead, let that last syllable fling sharply off your tongue) with the man behind this name’s fiery new-age blues guitar styling and growling voice, the result is pure promotional magic. Again, Joe Bonamassa is a blues rock guitar virtuoso and not a shortstop or a bantam weight fighter like that name of his might suggest.