About the Roy Jay Band
Expect to be surprised. While the Roy Jay Band has a signature sound, you never know where the music might take you. Every night, RJB’s cast of experienced improvisers travels to new places and carries the crowd along. Each live performance is an adventure. And while fans can count on hearing some staples, they should also prepare for the unexpected--whether a favorite cover or a new original. Drawing from the wide swath of American-music styles, RJB performances have become, at turns, forays into rhythm-and-soul, gritty blues-rock, lithe funk-jazz, and even the occasional free-form psychedelic freak-out--all tied together by the seasoned ensemble. On the heels of recent tours supporting venerable acts including Little Feat, Donna the Buffalo, and The Radiators, the Roy Jay Band is poised to continue bringing its unique brand of music to an ever-growing national audience. As one new fan from the Charleston, SC area wrote, “The Roy Jay Band show was everything that was promised--and more.… [If] you live within driving distance of where they're likely to play, take a good friend's advice and GO! Wonderful human beings and wonderful music. Get it while you can.”
Bradley Rhea (Bass and Vocals)
Brad’s what you’d call a lifer musician – guitar at 11, bass at 13 – “A bunch of my friends were already playing guitar; I figured they’d need a bass player.” By 16, he was in Diamond Grime, a classic rock cover band that played colleges, and he’s been earning his living with four strings ever since.
In his 20s he helped form Grinning Mob, and that led to two albums and nine years of good work, although they were never able to break out of his home region of Southwest Pennsylvania. When Grinning Mob broke up, as bands generally do, he went free-lance. Having connected with John Zias on Dead Net Central, he sarted going down to Tampa, Florida, on an annual basis to play in the DNC Tampa Jam celebrations…and when Roy Jay talked to John about putting together a band, he was the natural choice for the bass chair.
Being a native of Southwest Pennsylvania, Brad’s a Pittsburgh Steelers fan – “They put it in the water.” He likes to make up for the lousy food on the road by cooking healthy stuff at home, and he’s a supporter of Amnesty International. But music is the largest part of his life, and he counts shows like the Cream reunion at Madison Square Garden, Willie Nelson, Return to Forever, and two Paul McCartney shows among his life treasures.
Carson Cohen (Keyboards and Vocals)
Carson Cohen happens to love playing on instruments that aren’t his norm, which is good, because he’s actually a bass player by trade. Actually, he started on guitar, but then he discovered Motown and decided that Paul was his favorite Beatle, and so began his love affair with the bass. Interestingly, he writes left-handed, but plays bass with his right. Flexible, indeed. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he passed through a few colleges, including Berklee, but didn’t stay too long. Back in Los Angeles, he found himself backing up singer songwriters, which is how he met Roy, but always wanted to be part of a band. He describes himself as more a Phish-head than Dead fan, and even more, a huge fan of Frank Zappa – as well as Bernard Herrmann, the great film composer (Citizen Kane, Alfred Hitchcock’s best stuff, Taxi Driver).
We can reveal: in the visual arts, he’s a student of Salvador Dali, whom he describes as “Disturbing and awesome,” and who first turned him on to art. Also Magritte and Escher. Not surprisingly, he also likes brain puzzles, Sudoku, that sort of thing. In the world of reading, he is fascinated with books on science, specifically cosmology – and name-checked The Elegant Universe, a book about string theory, as something he especially likes to try to wrap his brain around.
A flexible brain – every band needs one.
Dan DeGregory (Percussion and Vocals)
Dan DeGregory does not conform to the usual stereotype of drummers as out-of-control loons (think Keith Moon as the patron saint of this breed). After all, they do hit things with sticks. Instead, he’s a family guy with two teenage sons who describes his wife, Lane, as the rock star of the family – she’s won a Pulitzer Prize for her work as a feature writer at the St. Petersburg Times. Dan was born and raised in New Jersey, then went to college and graduate school at the University of Virginia, where he studied the rhetorical theories of Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero (told you he wasn’t the average drummer!).
After early formal training in classical clarinet, he taught himself drums on the many sets that passed through his family. In college, he got caught up in the club-gig scene and has been working as a drummer and singer ever since. He likes freshwater fishing and is an avowed dog lover. He also supports St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. And in keeping with the animal theme, he said that the book that really grabbed his imagination was Rafi Zabor’s The Bear Comes Home, which concerns a bear who becomes a great saxophone player. “It sounds bizarre, I know, but it’s a remarkable book. You forget you’re reading about a bear…”
John Zias (Lead Guitar and Vocals)
John Zias has been playing in public since he was 11. He was part of what might have been the first (1969!) Grateful Dead cover band, Cavalry, and then went to Berklee, where he played with Mike Stern and Bill Frisell, while studying with Mick Goodrick and Pat Metheny. Elsewhere, he’s played with Al DiMeola, Eliot Easton (the Cars), and Van Manakas (Gil Evans as well as bluegrass master Butch Baldassari). He’s a true rock/jazz fusion guitarist. But his Grateful Dead roots go deep.
Recently (August 2011), his (and Brad’s and Dan’s) side band “The Electricians” played in Berkeley, and noted G.D. author Blair Jackson had this to say about John’s playing: “Zias definitely blew my mind. He's a guy clearly from the Garcia School, but the note choices he makes are by and large quite different than ones JG would make, so it feels fresh and original. Yet I'd say his playing has a lot of the emotional heft of Garcia. Serious chops indeed, but chops in the service of emotional content.”
On the more personal level, we can reveal that as a child John was the world’s biggest Godzilla fan. He is a superb Szechuan-style cook, and he likes reading about the real world – his current favorite book is Naomi Klein’s very scary The Shock Doctrine.
Regi Oliver (Saxophones and Vocals)
Regi Oliver is from Louisiana, where he attended LSU and Southern before graduating from Berklee College of Music. He spent a decade in the San Francisco Bay Area as a fellow of the California Arts Council, writing grants and working in environments like Stanford University and the Bayview Opera House in San Francisco. He was also involved with both the Oakland San Francisco Symphony Orchestras. At the same time – busy guy – he was working as a studio musician (saxophones, flute, tuba, and MIDI) and producer. He co-authored The Story of Gospel and was involved with Kalimba Records. Eventually, he hit the road to perform, joining legendary jazz musician Sam Rivers and later the extraordinary blues star Lucky Peterson, with whom he played in 38 countries around the world.
On the more personal level, we can reveal that he lives by what Albert Schweitzer once said: “There are only two true escapes from the miseries of life – music and cats.” He has five. His main occupation these days is learning to play the guitar – “Everybody in the band plays guitar but me.” And that’s led to his writing two method books for 8-string lap steel guitar. Finally, he recommends Blues All Around Me, the autobiography of B. B. King. “Every musician who leaves school should read this before going on the road.”
Roy Jay (Guitar and Vocals)
Worth the wait: Roy Jay’s newest CD, Joy Ray, documents that sometimes the good things just take a little bit longer.
Roy Jay’s music didn’t come to him young or easy, and it took real effort to get to it. As a kid he had two near-misses; brother had a guitar that Roy started getting really interested in – until said brother took it away. And his early practice sessions with the trumpet didn’t exactly appeal to his father. Then, as a young man, just as he might have gotten going, there was a daughter to care for.
So it was only a few years back that he found time and focus to resume playing – but he got serious very quickly. Mostly raised in Virginia and now a Floridian, he briefly landed in Los Angeles and found himself hanging around a few clubs that specialized in singer-songwriters. After a while, he decided he had a strong urge to write songs, visited his brother, took the guitar back, and started playing.
A year later he started feeling as though he could play in front of people, and in late 2008 he fell in with Chris Seefried, Roseanne Cash’s guitarist and a respected producer who’d worked with various friends of Roy’s. They collaborated on songs and thought about a creating an EP…and things snowballed. In March 2009 they released Lucky Guy, a full CD that included work with two members of Counting Crows.
“Lucky Guy didn’t have a direction,” Roy says now. “It was kind of a conglomeration of different personality pieces. There were a couple of Jimmy Buffett songs, some singer-songwriter takes, and some potential jam band material. We’ve done much better since then, but I’ve gotta admit I still like to listen to “California Grey” from Lucky Guy. And the band likes playing “In and Out of Dreams,” so it definitely has good parts to it. I just had more to learn.”
It was time to tour, an entirely new part of the music experience. “What I learned was that every day was different. One time we played Denver, in this really elegant nice place. Good gig. Then the next day we played what was basically a garage in Salt Lake City, and yet it was just as good – I found out that the people in the audience are a lot more important than the quality of the venue.”
Bit by bit, the band came together, and as each piece joined, the momentum built. “We found Dan DeGregory (drums) and John Zias (lead guitar) when we opened for a band they were in. Carson Cohen (keyboards) was playing with several of the singer-songwriters I knew in L.A. Bradley Rhea I got to know from Grateful Dead fan circles – I was a serious Dead Head for some years, before I had to go to work. And I met Regi Oliver (saxophones) around here in Orlando. Half the band – John, Carson, and Regi – went to Berklee, and I’m still studying at Berklee online, so we’re really a jazz band disguised as a rock band.”
“After a singer-songwriter tour with four acoustic guitars, I went back to Los Angeles for the second album. We called it Fairfax Avenue, where the studio was, because that’s where I grew up, musically. It was definitely more focused on the music that came out of the guitar when I play.” And that sound is a combination of grit and blues plus Roy’s laid-back personality – grooves that are perfect for the jam band sound he likes.
The tours that followed Fairfax Avenue found Roy and the band growing up, traveling with quality company like Little Feat, Donna the Buffalo, and the Radiators, and movin’ on up in their skills, tightness, and audience response.
And so we come to Joy Ray, really the music that Roy was meant to make. It shows a couple of different sides of his musical personality, from the mellow, singer-songwriter flavored tunes like “In the Moment,” “Agua Dulce, and “Double Down,” which is a country-flavored dance through the reliable themes of love and gambling.
But it’s when they turn up the intensity and start wailing that you know Roy and the Roy Jay Band have arrived. “John Brown” is a dark, haunted song with a chorus of “John Brown is dead inside.” Then there’s the guy in “Back on the Bus,” who “borrowed two tons of guilty/And lost his soul in the deal.”
There’s lots more songs there, and we’ll leave it to you to listen.
But we’re confident you’re going to agree…it was all worth the wait.
