issue 36 working_Layout 1 10/2/2013 10:46 PM Page 31
BILL CARBONE- FROM BEHIND THE KIT
With new contributing writer Juliana Spence
Max Creek’s drummer Bill
Carbone played with five acts and
was the most sought after musician at Wormtown Music Festival
in Greenfield, MA this year, even
with bass player Oteil Burbridge
from the Allman Brothers playing
on the scene.
With a wet beginning on Friday morning the skies cleared up
in the late afternoon at Wormtown
and made way for a beautiful
weekend of music, camping, and
friends. Best part of Wormtown is
that the musicians really hang out
and you can see them walking
around the festival day after day,
mingling and enjoying themselves.
Bill Carbone was seen a lot behind
the kit.
Even though he didn’t camp
out the drummer/percussionist performed seven sets of music
throughout the weekend, including
a four-hour set with headliner Max
Creek. The cool thing about Max
Creek that Carbone loves is that
they have two drummers, like
Shakedown the Grateful Dead
cover band he plays in as well.
“Max Creek is where my heart is
most deeply,” Carbone said. “It’s
the combination of everything I
love and playing jam rock on that
level is my childhood dream.”
Carbone’s list of acts continue with Zach Deputy n’ Friends,
Otis Grove, two sets with Shakedown, and his own super group
The Yams, with Mark Mercier and
J Stanley of Max Creek, Jeff Martinson of Shakedown, Dan Broad
from Rev Tor’s band and Danny
Draher, a guitarist/singer from Dr.
John’s band and many others.
You might remember Carbone from some of his earlier projects The Miracle Orchestra (his
first group with Garrett Sayers now
of Motet) and the dubbed out reggae band Buru Style, which he
started after a back packing trip
through Jamaica. “I came home
loving things like Cedric Brooks
and The Mystic Revelation of
Rastafari and Count Ossie and so
forth,” said Carbone. “I transcribed
tons of that stuff for my thesis and
just wanted to play it, so I grabbed
a bunch of Wesleyan students and
Buru Style was born.”
During their short ride Buru
Style toured, backed up Toussaint
Liberator, and recorded the album
Steal Away along with three more
albums available on
bandcamp.com. The band broke
up when the majority of the members moved far away. Carbone
says that now most of them are
back there’s a plan to start working
on some new stuff and possibly reunite Buru Style.
Carbone, also
a teacher at Wesleyan University, is
an incredibly talented drummer to
say the least. His
ability to move from
jam-rock to reggae
to funk and back
with tinges of bluegrass and jazz hits
makes him technical
and fun, calculated
and free spirited at
the same time.
He has recorded with JBB and although the members haven’t been
discussed much in the past Carbone
is the full-time percussionist for 10ft
Ganja Plant, who just had a CD release in Boston last month. And just
to make sure he stays incredibly busy
Carbone has a new project – Sparkplug, with Beau Sasser organist from
Melvin Sparks.
Most of the time the drummer is not
seen. The audience doesn’t study
him. He is not recognizable at the
after party or in the crowd. But the
drummer is the engine of the jam, the
rock-steady. Look out for Bill Carbone because you can be sure he is
a major part of the best of today’s
music scene in the Northeast. Max
Creek comes to The Flying Monkey in
Plymouth, NH on October 18 and
Sparkplug will be at Nectar’s in
Burlington in early November.