Hold on to to your hats...
The Chandler Travis Philharmonic is a 9-piece ensemble from Boston that
includes a horn section, string bass, keyboard, mandocello, guitar,
drums, accordion, and singing valet.
It’s possible they might be the missing link between the Kinks and Sun Ra…
The Philharmonic was born in the fall of 1996 at the Lizard Lounge in
Cambridge, on the occasion of Chandler doing a guest shot there with a
house band led by multi-instrumentalist/singer
Dinty Child. When asked if he would like to add any additional
instrumentation, Chandler, having always hated when elderly bands ruan
out of ideas to this extent, facetiously suggested “oh yeah,let’s get
some horns and chick back-up singers.” Strangely, Dinty complied with
the horn part, booking (among others) genius trumpeter Keiichi
Hashimoto, and the CTP was surprisingly hatched!
Later
on,cross-dressing drummer Rikki Bates, a pal of Chandler’s from the
Casuals and one of the more amazing instrumentalists on the planet, and
Keith Spring, (NRBQ, Martin Mull) helped complete the picture.
Since then,the band -all colorfully garbed 8 pieces of them, plus
singing valet Fred Boak -have introduced the concept of alternative
dixieland and omnipop to audiences all over Massachusetts and far beyond
(San Francisco,Chicago,and especially New Orleans and New York City
have proved particularly responsive -the Village Voice declared them
“keenly entertaining”, calling Chandler “a true New England eccentric
and a master of daft power pop”, and the band “a blend of Ringling Bros.
and Ra” that “puts the harm back in Philharmonic”, and the New Yorker
has repeatedly concurred.)
The band released its debut album,
“Let’s Have a Pancake”,along with 26 other website-only full-length CDs
(the improbable and ground-breaking RadioBall series) in 2000 as a means
of welcoming in the new century; four more “official” Philharmonic
releases followed,all on the Sonic Trout label, the most recent being
2010's “The Chandler Travis Philharmonic Blows!”, which followed hard on
the heels of Chandler’s first solo release in a decade, 2009's “After
She Left”.