Published: June 24, 2009 08:32 am      

Meet Me Downtown

By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor

Corbin Main Street’s “Meet Me Downtown” free summer concert series continues this Friday with the second of three concerts. This week’s features Lexington jazz-fusion band SDQ, who will be performing at 7 p.m. Friday at the corner of Main and Monroe streets. (In case of bad weather, cancellation announcements will be made 24 hours prior to the event.)

SDQ is Sam Flowers (vocals, trumpet, keyboard) of Lexington; Brad Grable (sax, electric guitar, bass guitar) of Hopkinsville; Ross Whitaker (electric guitar) of Lexington; Danny Williams (bass guitar, electric baritone five-string mandolin) of Winchester; and Tyler Little (drums) of Lexington.

Want to know a little more about the band? Turn to page 3 for a conversation with guitarist Ross Whitaker.

Q: You seem to have a pretty strong following in the Lexington area. How long have you been together?

A: The band has been around for about five years.  We’ve had the current lineup for maybe two or two and a half years.  We should really keep a band timeline, because we never have an accurate answer for these questions!

Q: A friend of mine saw you playing at a club in Lexington — you performed the entirety of Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue.” What can the Corbin audience expect from Friday’s show? Will it be original music, or do you have something else special in mind?

A: On Friday, we’ll probably do a mix of our original material and songs by other artists.  To give you an idea, we’ve performed material by (among others) the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Black Crowes, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, James Brown, Al Green, Sly and the Family Stone, etc.

Q: So here’s the lame “describe your style of music” question. I know, it’s “jazz, rock, funk and soul.” I guess, if you had to pick one of the four — jazz, rock, funk or soul — which is most important to your music and why?

A: They’re all important.  If we excised any one of those four elements, or any of the others that are in there, it wouldn’t be SDQ. 

Q: Is this music you can dance to or sway to? Or both?

A: You can move to our music in any way you see fit.

Q: Corbin’s in a fairly small, rural area and the idea of “jazz” might seem intimidating or off-putting to some folks. What would you say to convince people to come out to Friday’s concert?

A: Firstly, I wouldn’t call it jazz, and I have two reasons for that.  For one, people think jazz is the boring stuff they hear during the local forecast, and that’s not jazz.  (That stuff is usually called  smooth jazz, or, lately, urban adult contempory.  From the outside that might seem picky, but to us the two styles are as different as, say, Toby Keith and Metallica.) 

Secondly, I wouldn’t call it jazz because it’s not jazz. 

 The two styles we draw on the most are things like funk/soul/R&B (think James Brown, Stevie Wonder, etc.) and rock music (think Led Zeppelin, Gov’t Mule, etc.).  When I personally think about what we do, I just think “American music.”

 So I would tell people if they like funky grooves and rocking riffs, they will like what we do.