Jasper Grooves Collective will be celebrating the release of our second full length album Soulful Machine at 8 pm on Friday, November 15 at Avogadro’s Number in Ft. Collins.

You’re invited to attend what will be a unique performance featuring 13 different musicians over the course of the evening. We’re going to be performing the entire new album and revisiting originals from our repertoire that we’ve been building over the last decade. We’ll have a four-piece horn section including Hugh Ragin on trumpet and Andrew Vogt on saxophones. We’ll also have Chris Beers on percussion, Jennifer Matsuura on violin, Zach Brakes on tuba, Joe Hoffarth on bassoon and a host of other musicians.

What’s more, next week, on Wednesday, 11/ 13 Jasper Grooves Collective will be the featured “Colorado Artist of the Day” on KRFC, 88.9 fm. This means that KRFC’s deejays will be playing our music at least one song from our new album every hour throughout the course of the day. Additionally, we will be featured on “Locally Sourced” from noon to 1 pm MST, where I’ll be interviewed by Ben Dickinson. While on the air, I will play an unplugged tune or two from the new album in the studio! KRFC can be streamed worldwide at KRFCFM.org

Since releasing our second full length album is a milestone, I thought it would be worth sharing some history about our group. It was about twelve years back that drummer Mark Raynes and I started regularly playing music together at jazz jams in town. I would drop by the jams and sing, interesting in exploring jazz vocals. Initially, I figured Raynes was a jazz purist and didn’t play rock music but soon learned that he was open to all kinds of music. Raynes is just as comfortable talking Led Zeppelin and the Flaming Lips as he is talking Chick Corea or Thelonious Monk, and he can play all of the above. His open mindedness transcends genres, and I felt like it was a good match for my eclectic songwriting. Blending soul, jazz and blues with world music, rock and reggae influences felt natural to both of us. Once we started recording and playing together regularly, our sound, a sort of globetrotter soul, started taking shape! Over the last ten years, we’ve had a blast bringing other Colorado musicians like bassist Jo Asker, trombonist Rob Borger, saxophonists Andrew Vogt and Joe Hoffarth, keyboardist Victor Mestas, percussionist Chris Beers, singer Toni Morgan, violinist Jennifer Matsuura and many others into the fold.

Why, you might wonder, is the group a “collective?” Why not Jasper Grooves Band or something else? Collectives are about community, and, for me, music is always communal in nature. Yes, there are certain solo artists that stand out and dominate the marquees, but even if they aren’t openly given credit, there is always a team of people in the background that have helped to make their music possible. JGC is no exception. I am always thankful to have highly skilled musicians like Michael Olson on our team. Olson sometimes plays bass with us and oftentimes helps us by putting together professional arrangements of the songs I’ve written. He is unafraid to delve into writing parts for instruments that don’t ordinarily get anywhere near a rock ‘n roll stage. Olson may not have studied tuba, but he sure as heck isn’t afraid to dive into writing a part for a tuba or a bassoon for that matter.

We are also a collective because we’re a group that believes the sum is greater than the parts. For many years, I’ve admired groups like the Art Ensemble of Chicago that believed deeply in community and a sort of tribal approach to music where no one artist is the star, but the group itself embodies the culmination of their collective efforts. On 11/15 we’ll be playing songs that I wrote, but the horn arrangements have often been a team effort and there are at least four different arrangers who contributed to the songs’ arrangements. Similarly, Mark Raynes’ skills go way beyond drumming and percussion. He has been our de facto producer for JGC and has put in countless hours mixing and mastering these songs and bringing them to fruition. We look forward to seeing you all there at Avogadro’s Number and spending a beautiful moment together. It will be a night to remember for sure!

July 23, 2024

Summertime rolls… I hope all of you are finding opportunities to get out and enjoy this beautiful season in Colorado. Jasper Grooves Collective has some exciting news that I wanted to share with all of you! Soulful Connection, our second full length album, has been officially released on both CD and on digital platforms. It is worth mentioning that there are three tracks that were previously unreleased that have been released with the album. “At the Baggage Claim,” “The Easy Stuff” and “Early Morning Raga for D. Boon” are the three brand new ones. “At the Baggage Claim” was inspired, you guessed it, at a baggage claim. Listen for the actual baggage claim that sparked the song idea, at the end of the song. “The Easy Stuff” veers into new sonic territory for the collective and features Northern Colorado blues great and longtime friend, Cary Morin, on steel pedal guitar. By the way, if you’re looking for the full album on streaming services look for the image of Soulful Machine with the title of the album written in yellow on the cover art. The image, minus the title, is just the single! In addition to the new songs, all of the songs on the full length album have been remastered by Mark Raynes to bring them to their full sonic potential.

If you are still a fan of physical albums, the CD is also available. It does have its perks including most of the album’s lyrics, and details about the recordings as well as the personnel on all of the tracks. There were 20 different musicians who contributed to the project, so it is cool to see who it was playing the bassoon on “Skeletons of Language” or tuba on “Bad Bed Hair”!  Reach out through email or message me on social media if you’d like to order a copy. We’ll get it mailed to you for $20, postage paid.

In addition to releasing the album, I also recently had the awe inspiring experience of being interviewed by iconic bassist Mike Watt on his show The Watt from Pedro Show. Watt, as you might already know, is a hero of underground music. For over 45 years, he has toured the country, initially with The Minutemen, then Firehose and then with his own groups such as Mike Watt and the Missingmen, always in a modest Econoline van logging in thousands of miles and blowing minds all along the way. Are you “down with the bass?” As a musician, it’s always great to get to talk to one of your musical heroes and a bonus to have that conversation documented. The interview/show, from July 8, is archived on Watt’s website and I’ll include a link to it here if you’d like to check it out! https://www.twfps.com/past-episodes/on-air-guest-brian-jasper-hull-from-fort-collins-co-via-skype-1

Otherwise, we are excited to announce that the Brian Jasper Hull Trio will be playing on Sunday, August 4 from 7-10 pm at the Crown Pub, 134 S. College Ave. in Ft. Collins. We’ll have the new album on hand as well as a selection of new Jasper Grooves Collective t-shirts. Mark Raynes will be on drums. Jo Asker will be on standup bass. We’ll be playing some of our newest songs as well as a choice selection of jazz standards, Brazilian tunes and, as always, some curve balls thrown in for good measure. Looking forward to seeing y’all there in the comfortable underground confines of the Crown Pub where it’s cool and breezy even when it’s a scorcher outside.

Musical improvisation is often seen as a sort of mysterious process that is difficult to learn. Creative songwriting is similarly characterized in popular mythology as haphazard and inaccessible to ordinary mortals. However, both the art of improvisation and the art of songwriting can be fostered and cultivated through approaches that are both accessible and tangible. In this workshop, internationally renowned jazz cornetist Kirk Knuffke, and local musician Brian Jasper Hull, of Jasper Grooves Collective and Meadowlark Jivin, will be teaming up for a two day workshop focusing on the creative musical process and effectively integrating improvisation into one’s own songwriting and performance.

Hull is a songwriter, poet and guitarist who draws from influences as diverse as soul, blues, jazz, Brazilian and Caribbean sounds. Knuffke grew up here in Fort Collins and has since relocated to New York City where he has built an extensive resume of recordings and musical projects. Knuffke, who has taught at the renowned Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York, has drawn inspiration from the CMS ethos where artists like Don Cherry and the Art Ensemble of Chicago set the standard for participative music workshops.

You might ask, could I benefit from such a workshop? Knuffke, who has worked in collaboration with Karl Berger, the founder of the Creative Music Studio, has drawn extensively from Berger’s teaching philosophy. As Berger put it, “Basic musical training, the kind that does not deal with a particular musical style or with the playing of an instrument, seems to be beneficial for practically anyone. A sense of right timing and rhythmic cycles, for example, seems to be a basic human need. In fact, all the performing arts could benefit from these practices. This is why body discipline, dance, all visual media, poetry, and songwriting are complementary to contemporary musical development.”

All levels and instruments, including voice, are welcome to take part in this unique participatory workshop.

https://www.kirkknuffke.com/

As we make our way into 2022, there’s a lot cooking for Jasper Grooves Collective.

Over the last year, we released several new singles including “Blues for Sisyphus,” “Soulful Machine,” and “Skeletons of Language.” And occasionally, though not as much as we would have liked, we even got out and performed live. In 2022 we’re on track to continue expanding our sonic horizons. Here’s a few things to look forward to as we come closer to getting our second full length album completed.

I’ll be playing solo in the lobby of The Lyric, 1209 N. College Ave., on Friday, February 25. I’ll be doing two 45 minute sets, 5:45-6:30 and 8:15-9 pm, so come catch a film and see some live music, or just come for the live set. Then on March 2, we’ll do a mini version of Jasper Grooves Collective at Odell Brewing from 5-7 pm. Mark Raynes will do the honors on drums and Jo Asker will be on standup bass. Other than upcoming performances Jasper Grooves Collective has been very active recording new tunes.

“Boxing Gloves,” our newest single is slated to be released by February, is probably the most heavily Brazilian-influenced song that JGC has recorded yet. We are thrilled to have brought salsa and jazz maestro Victor Mestas into the studio to lay down the song’s keyboard parts. We also brought in Boulder-based percussionist Carl Dixon to put some serious Brazilian flavor into the mix. And though Michael Olson has often helped JGC as an arranger, we were psyched to add his fretless bass playing on this one.

Lyrically, “Boxing Gloves” is a song that asks questions. The answers depend on who’s answering. Is it the callused expert or is it the openminded child? The same question asked of the pragmatic adult who’s “been there and done that” won’t get the same answer from a child. Which turns the song’s questions right back at the skeptical adults among us. We’ve learned a lot but is there still room left in our hearts for the messiness of unpragmatic love? Every day we’re faced with dilemmas when it comes to who and what we choose to fight for. It’s inevitable to stumble across situations that are uncomfortable. The bad news seems endless. We pass homeless encampments on the fringes of our cities. A bewildered and disoriented baby bird shows up on our back porch after a thunderstorm. Another orphan has arrived in need of help. The weight of the world weighs on our souls. If we aren’t careful, others’ troubles feel like our inconvenience.

We could look the other way. After all, the world is full of skeptics who have given up on the power of love. But children don’t have this luxury. They engage with the world head on. Their openheartedness challenges us to reevaluate. Maybe we could drop the façade of “expertise.” Maybe we could learn something from their beginner’s mind, their so-called naiveté. Those old boxing gloves have spent far too long up in the attic. Maybe it’s time to dust them off.

While “Boxing Gloves” explores the frontiers of samba and soul, another new song “No Man’s Land” features the sound of a traditional Brazilian instrument, the berimbau, in a non-traditional setting. “No Man’s Land” should be released by mid-February or early March. While it’s true that “No Man’s Land” draws heavily from a distinctly Brazilian instrument, it is a song that defies easy classification. Don’t expect a saccharine remake of “The Girl From Ipanema.” Rather than imitating Brazilian classics, we saw it as a chance to explore new hybrids. Imagine a bleak Western landscape, a lonely vehicle traveling on remote mountain roads as a thunderstorm begins to mercilessly rain down onto the song’s protagonist. Think Wall of Voodoo with a dash of Nana Vasconcelos and Augustus Pablo on melodica thrown in for good measure. To put it succinctly, we’re pretty sure, you haven’t heard a song quite like this one before.

Where “Boxing Gloves” explores the human capacity for compassion and love, “No Man’s Land” explores devastating landscapes of impending doom. It’s like getting a front row seat to someone’s meltdown just as things begin to unravel. Things can suddenly take an abrupt turn for the strange. But there’s something beautiful in there all the same. It’s doom, but it’s a beautiful impending doom.

The next song waiting in the wings is “Velcro Shoes.” The song is a tribute to Walter Jenkins Jr. who is a musical mentor for me. When he was playing regularly in Fort Collins, I watched in awe as Walt pulled entire audiences under his spell night after night. As Jenkins made his way onto the stage, the props and respect were palpable in the air. Folks love Jenkins, but isn’t out of deference to his sartorial grandeur, it is something deeper than superficial theatrics. Dressed in sweatpants and Velcro shoes, Jenkins shunned visual gimmicks and instead dazzled the listeners with a cascade of ivory acrobatics serving up, a literal feast for the ears. Soul, funk and blues oozed out of Jenkins’ pores as sweat oozed out of the rapt audience members. While the Velcro might have been overlooked, it wasn’t incidental. Just as the scratchy yin and yang of the Velcro worked like an irresistible gravitational pull, Jenkins’ grooves pulled the audience into a symbiotic swirl of sound and writhing bodies. Anyone, who wasn’t initiated would soon learn not to mess with the man in the Velcro shoes.

As a rule of thumb, funk requires a greasy skillet before any serious cooking gets underway. To grease the proverbial pan, we enlisted veteran Marty Rein to do the honors on bass. Rein spent many years as Jenkins’ bassist, and so we only felt it was right to have another of Jenkins’ proteges on the tune. Beyond bass, the song needed some soulful vocals and we brought in Toni Morgan, one of the Gladys Knight’s famous Pips, who spent many years under the soul-diva’s tutelage. The result is… well, you’ll have to hear it.

The long and short of this message is that we’ve got some exciting new songs in the making. Mark Raynes has been working his magic playing drums, percussion and producing these songs. The chemistry that we’ve developed over the past eight years of collaborating and playing together has only grown stronger and we believe you’ll hear it.

So please reach out and let us know what you’re enjoying and what you’d like to hear from us in 2022! If there are venues you think we should play at, don’t hesitate to let us know. We are definitely inspired to get out and perform live more this year despite the obvious challenges!

I am thrilled to announce the release of “Skeletons of Language” the latest Jasper Grooves Collective single. The song came out of a blend of unexpected elements. Musically, it was fantastic to collaborate with Joe Hoffarth who brought his bassoon into the recording session and offered some sonorities that, honestly, I had never expected would find their way into a funk/rock tune. Who woulda thunk it? You’ll never hear “Peter and the Wolf” the same again.

Adding to the sonic complexity of the song, Andrew Vogt cut loose on his alto saxophone with no other instructions other than, “Give it your best Pharaoh Sanders! Go for it!” Vogt rose to the challenge and then some. Jo Asker laid down a solid bassline and Mark Raynes put just the right groove onto it. The result is a genre-defying funk, free jazz, bassoon inflected, punk song that we think you will really enjoy. On a personal note, if I hadn’t grown up on the innovative sounds of the legendary punk band, The Minutemen, I don’t think I would have had the guts to write this song. So it was definitely appropriate that the song made its debut last year on Mike Watt’s online radio show The Watt From Pedro Show. And, as of today, “Skeletons of Language”  is available wherever you stream your music online. We here at Jasper Grooves Collective hope you find its quirkiness delightful.

Visually, the song is accompanied by a somewhat elusive image brought to life by Fort Collins artist, Baxter Long. Yes, there are cows on TV and yes you are watching them. It’s like a modern hieroglyph and I will leave you, the listener/viewer, to decipher it.

On a lyrical level, it was inspired by what was going on in 2020, but that is only half the story. We are still dealing with “skeletons of language” in 2021. Unfortunately, they aren’t going anywhere soon.

You might ask, just what is a skeleton of language? Maybe we should turn that question around. What is healthy language? What does full-bodied, vibrant and ambidextrous language look like? It’s a language without constraints, right? Straight talk. The truth and nothing but the truth. Let’s face it. All of us were naïve back in junior high. Maybe we were hoping to find a bold language, gutsy and unafraid to express what it sees, a language that jukes, jives, parries and, above all, isn’t ossified. Maybe we were all under the impression that folks around us were free to tell it like it is. But shine a spotlight on the wreckage of discourse in the twenty-first century, and all you see is mangled diction. It’s coming down to the wire, and we’ve spent far too long gargling in the rat race choir. At least that’s how Robert Zimmerman and a guy from Crazy Horse once put it.

What are skeletons of language? They are the stripped down words, the impoverished words that sit uselessly in the mouth like spent chewing gum devoid of flavor and are only spoken out of necessity. They are acronyms accompanied by an elevator music soundtrack, attempting to distill intense human feeling and emotion into flat two-dimensional substitutes of lol and lmao? WTF? Texting fingers flail away at the speed of light racing to keep up with ever faster microchip processors. Abbreviated emotions, abbreviated sonnets, abbreviated thoughts, SMS bots choke the airwaves. We’re trying to stay real but emojis aren’t going to cut it. As mom used to say, “use your words.”

These skeletons are complex words with historical implication eviscerated into guttural grunts. Like guacamole, n. from Nahuatl (Aztecan) ahuaca-molli, from ahuacatl "avocado" + molli "sauce, something ground" moler “to grind”  stripped down to meaningless monosyllables like guac.

“Put some guac on my junk,” says the dystopian burrito eater in a chain restaurant whose décor  pretends to be Aztec and where the overworked and underpaid descendants of real Aztecs have to suffer through the butchering of their native tongue, bastardized by the new conquistadors.

At 30,000 feet, the smooth talking pilot warns about an “air pocket,” a euphemism for turbulence. He uses the substitute term half-afraid that his passengers won’t understand the word turbulence, and half-afraid that they can’t handle the naked truth. Truth is, they’re about to get whipped around like hapless chihuahuas in the backseat of a Ford 150 driven by an oversexed adolescent, but nobody will let you say that.

The skeletons are all around us. In theaters of war, soldiers are killed by “friendly fire,” targeted civilians become “soft targets,” when their infrastructure is blown up it becomes “collateral damage.” Language becomes a house of mirrors where we’re left to choose between untangling the actual meanings or getting lulled into the doublespeak sleep. The mendacious lullaby.

This all might seem slightly depressing, but the truth-speakers are still out there fighting to raise their voices above the din. Sanity doesn’t always prevail, but it will never give up and the light is undying despite the public image spin and the brokers of disinformation. Yes, truth still gets spoken and when we hear it, we need to thank those who have the courage to speak it. Our lives are enriched by those who still believe that heartfelt speech can change the world we live in for the better.

Every song starts somewhere. Something clicks. Something grabs the ear. A melody or a rhythm arrives from nowhere. Stop the world. Stop the car. That could be a song. Like a hunter searches his prey, a songwriter is always on the lookout for the next source of inspiration. And occasionally a gift appears. A song arrives at the doorstep seductively wrapped in nothing but rhythm. “Soulful Machine” the next single to be released on August 6 by Jasper Grooves Collective, is such a song.

It came with a readymade groove. I was reading a mundane to-do list and the dishwashing machine in the kitchen was just another noisy machine in the background. But suddenly it dawned on me that there was more than meets the ear. That soulless contraption of gears, pumps and sparkling detergent was strangely laying down a solid, Caribbean groove. I perked up my ears, sang an improvised melody, and things began to come together. Soulful machinery, polyrhythmic dishwasher, syncopation machination…The feeling of paradox was immediate and inescapable. How could a machine, especially a machine made to perform such a banal task as dishwashing, conjure up visions of marimbas and trombones and tropical nights? It was simultaneously ludicrous and beautiful.

That said, I wasn’t going to write a song about a washing machine. I’ll leave that to someone else. When the bards of yore spoke about being visited by the muses, rattling washing machines aren’t exactly what comes to mind. But soulful machines, now that’s something that piques the imagination. In a world where the line between human and machine is becoming blurred, the distinction between the real and the digital loses its sense. One can’t quite separate the real deal from the brilliant fake and maybe we don’t really want to know. Maybe we’d prefer not to delve too deeply into the mirage for fear of what awaits us on the other side. And just who are all these people anyways? People will tell you anything to try and seduce you. Strangers in bars tell us about their old hometown and their old schools, but are their memories real or have they been insidiously implanted by their makers? And how would they even know anyhow? Their whole life gives off the tell-tale stench of a well-orchestrated lie. There’s no use in denying that there are replicants in our midst, contrived beings conceived by amateur gods, drunk on their own hubris.

But wait a second, let’s not get carried away. I was just toying with ideas, riffing on sci-fi fantasies, like John Coltrane used to riff on blues scales. In fact, “Soulful Machine” is a dance song. It’s a love song. Seriously, it’s a song about love at first sight that delves into the animalistic realm of pheromones, sweat and lust on the dance floor. There’s no reason to believe that the stranger who has just led us onto the dance floor is anything other than the genuine article. And obviously we would know the difference, right? Of course we would know the difference. How ridiculous to suggest it would even be possible to concoct a convincingly seductive being, all fabricated with microchips and genetic artifice. Pernicious nonsense. Anyhow, I shouldn’t lead you on any longer. After all, it’s you the listeners who will ultimately decipher what “Soulful Machine” means and whether there is reason to doubt ourselves on the dance floors and digital screens of our lives….

So keep an eye out for Jasper Grooves Collective’s latest tune to be released on Friday August 6! You’ll be able to find it wherever you find your music online. Please consider purchasing the song for your personal library and share widely if you enjoy what you hear!

What a year it has been! I hope all of you are getting back into the groove and feeling some sense that things are going to be alright!

Despite the pandemic, I am happy to say that music has continued and if anything it has been a rich period for creative exploration and reflection. I’ve been pretty quiet as of late about my musical endeavors, so I wanted to share some news about both the collective, Jasper Grooves Collective, and my solo work as Brian Jasper Hull. Along with Mark Raynes, Jo Asker and numerous other musical cohorts, I’ve managed to get about 5 new songs recorded and produced over the past year. Some of them will be released as singles from Jasper Grooves Collective and a couple from myself, Brian Jasper Hull. As the songs keep coming and the inspiration keeps flowing, I wanted to keep all of you in the loop about upcoming releases. You will be the first to know that the songs are coming out! This week on Friday July 9, “Blues for Sisyphus,” a Jasper Grooves Collective original, will be officially released on streaming platforms or wherever you find your music.

So why, you might ask, does Sisyphus have the blues? For aficionados of Greek mythology, you already know that Sisyphus was an inveterate rascal who pushed his luck too far with the gods. And for this rascality, he was condemned to perpetually push a rock up a hill whose summit he could never quite reach. At the moment of truth, the rock would frustratingly roll back to its starting place and Sisyphus would stubbornly try again. It’s an image that the French philosopher Albert Camus found to be a perfect metaphor for the modern human condition. And nowadays it ain’t just poor Sisyphus who’s stuck in the muck and the mire; it’s the daily absurdity that we all live in. It’s the grind, the workaday world, the hamster wheel. Some days there’s no denying it, we’re just treading water even if we know we were meant to fly. So that’s the thematic basis for this modern blues with ancient roots.

Beyond mythological themes, the song has its fair share of musical roots. It’s not a sad blues but a funky declaration of going beyond the blues, transcending the blues. It was exciting to get Walter Hannah on board playing organ for this one. Hannah is a Colorado-based keyboardist who I’ve wanted to work with for a long time. His touch on Hammond organ was the perfect match for the tune. It was also auspicious to get longtime collaborator Andrew Vogt on baritone sax to add some serious grease into the mix. As for the rhythm section, the usual suspects Mark Raynes played drums and Jo Asker held down the low end.

On the level of what inspired the tune, my experience has been that every song has an initial inspiration whether musical, visual or otherwise. The initial spark for Sisyphus was inspired by a good buddy of mine who regularly drops gems in his conversations. I will keep his identity on the lowdown as he generally prefers keeping things enigmatic and shadowy. Once I started getting the melody composed, I was undeniably influenced by the soulful vocals of Angelo, Fishbone’s lead singer, who has been a huge inspiration to me, ever since I first crossed paths with his music back in the 80s. If you happen to know Angelo pass the tune his way. I think he’d dig it!

A final version will be released on all your favorite streaming devices this Friday, July 9! Please check it out, buy a version for your collection, and share widely if you’re inspired. We don’t have plans to release a physical album just yet, but if I hear from enough of you that you’d love a vinyl or a CD, a full length project could well be forthcoming. Following this release, we will be periodically releasing more singles, including a new one called “Soulful Machine” that is a sort of homage to Blade Runner inspired by a dishwashing machine. More on that later… Please stay in touch and let us know what you think about “Blues for Sisyphus” and the other new tunes soon to be released.

Also, rumor has it that a Jasper Grooves Collective gig might be in the works for September over at Odell Brewing Co in Fort Collins… Stay tuned…

This week, we released the first single from the upcoming album “Ain’t Got No Dream.” You can find it on all platforms including I-tunes, YouTube and CD Baby where you can buy the single.

https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/jaspergroovescollective Also, if you connect with the music, please add a like or a short review to help spark some interest in this project. It’s worth saying that the song is over 6 minutes long and it even has an orchestral style arrangement at the end! When “Hey Jude” came out in 1968 at more than 7 minutes in length it was extremely rare to record extended length pop music, and even more rare that it turned out to be so successful. Here’s hoping attention spans in 2019 are still equipped for listening beyond 6 minutes ;)