Music of Butcher Brown to Heat Up Grinnell
The music of Butcher Brown will fill Herrick Chapel on the Grinnell College campus at 7:30 p.m. on March 27. The Grinnell College Public Events Committee is sponsoring the Butcher Brown concert and masterclass, with support from a grant from the Iowa Economic Development Authority/Iowa Arts Council.
Butcher Brown’s music defies easy categorization. “It’s music for everybody," says band member Marcus “Tennishu” Tenney (trumpet, saxophone, vocals). “You can see it on all kinds of different faces, young, old, big, small, short, tall — they all start dancing eventually.”
Band member Devonne “DJ Harrison” Harris (multi-instrumentalist) adds, “We are the melting pot. We are the mix,” Harris says. “I feel like that’s what we represent.” Butcher Brown makes music as diverse as the band members’ varied tastes and backgrounds, including jazz, hip-hop, rock, funk, R&B, alternative, soul, country, house, bossa nova, and pop.
New Album to Debut
Butcher Brown’s new album, Letters from the Atlantic, will come out on March 28 from Concord Jazz. The album is a travelogue up and down the East Coast, from the Chesapeake Bay to New York, down to Florida, and across the Atlantic to Europe. From the seventh-heaven opener “Seagulls” to a celestial cover of the late Wayne Shorter’s “Infant Eyes,” it could be the band’s purest musical distillation yet.
Public Events Committee member Erik Jarvis says that “modern jazz” is one way to describe Butcher Brown’s music. Jarvis, a music technical assistant at the College, says that at its core, the instrumentation is basically a straightforward jazz combo — piano, guitar, bass, drums, and saxophone.
“However, the piano player uses lots of electronic keyboards and effects pedals, and the guitarist uses lots of effects pedals, too. Their saxophone player also raps. Listeners who enjoy jazz will almost certainly enjoy Butcher Brown, but enjoying jazz is not a prerequisite to enjoying Butcher Brown. Their present a large variety of sounds, and everyone in the band is amazing at what they do.”
A Learning Opportunity
Jarvis says he expects the masterclass with Butcher Brown will be very laid back and student driven. Students will have the opportunity to work closely with the band members, who are virtuoso musicians, composers, and producers. “They have a lot of knowledge and tricks they can share,” Jarvis says.
It might seem like a remarkable opportunity for music lovers at a small liberal college in the middle of Iowa, and it is. However, Jarvis says, Grinnell College has been providing exceptional concert experiences for at least the past 50 years. “People ‘in the know’ are aware of Georgia Dentel and her work, as well as the student-run concerts committee. Public Events has also been a staple of that culture,” he says. Former Grinnell staff member Dentel (now deceased) brought more than 1,000 concerts to Grinnell, including the Jackson Five, The Police, Jefferson Airplane, and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.
So, while this is an amazing opportunity for a small liberal arts college, it’s not necessarily unheard of at Grinnell. “It is an invaluable part of the campus experience to be able to access world-class music like this so easily,” Jarvis says. And, he adds, being able to engage the band in such a personalized educational environment is quite rare and notable.
He encourages everyone to come out for the concert to experience Butcher Brown’s music for themselves. “I expect lots of jamming, groovy music. I expect some rapping,” Jarvis says. “I hope lots of people will come to this concert and feel engaged and enlivened.”
For a sample of the music, check out Butcher Brown’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert.
Manager of Conference Operations and Events Jenelle Veit and Assistant Director of Corporate, Foundation, and Government Relations Cindy Schaus wrote the grant proposal to the Iowa Arts Council, which supports the arts and culture in Iowa. The Iowa Arts Council exists within the Iowa Economic Development Authority with support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
This event is free and open to the public. No tickets are required. The College welcomes the participation of people with disabilities. Information about parking and accessibility is available on the College website, grinnell.edu. Accommodation requests may be made to Conference Operations at 641-269-3235 or calendar@grinnell.edu.