After selling out the Side Door and amazing everyone there with his “Florida Bjorkestra” show last summer, pianist and arranger Jeremy Douglass is back this Sunday with a new project. Red Rain features the music of Peter Gabriel and Tori Amos – performed live with 16 players and singers on stage.
Like the Bjorkestra, this is not some cheesy tribute act. This is a one-of-a-kind show created especially for the Palladium. Jeremy chooses artists who don’t tour or don’t get to Florida often. And he recruits a array performers from various genres – jazz, pop, classical and musical theater – to join him on-stage.
I spoke with Jeremy this week to talk more about this unique show that will fill the intimate Side Door cabaret with musicians and fans. (And check out the Tori-Peter mash-up that Jeremy created at the bottom of the blog!
PalladiumPaul: Your shows like the Florida Bjorkestra and now Red Rain are much more than standard tribute shows. Can you tell me about your approach when planning these shows?
Jeremy Douglass: Well, it started it The Wizard of Oz. A few years ago my wife Rebecca Zapen wanted to do a jazz show with all the music from Wizard of Oz, so I set to arranging that. It was really the first time I had done any arranging with actual parts and notation for a live show. I had done a lot of this for recording albums. Writing parts, playing those parts, bringing in other musicians to record those parts was second nature to me. So doing it for a show was a treat.
Last year I was driving to Naples and listening to Bjork and lamenting the fact that her sound and production is uncoverable. As in no band could play this stuff. It’s too dense, too orchestrated and too electronic. And then, in thinking about it, I concluded that it was only uncoverable until someone did it. I know lots of great musicians. I’ll approach this like writing parts for an album and then I’ll just hand those parts to my friends and we’ll make it happen. As it turned out, I needed 15 friends to pull that off, it was a huge undertaking, but it paid off really well.
For Red Rain, it’s a similar undertaking. But Peter Gabriel and Tori Amos are a lot more approachable than Bjork. I’ve come at this one less as an acoustic retelling of the material, like I did with Bjork, and more as a 1:1 scale recreation of the material. Except no synths. I have string players and horn players to handle those parts. Both of these artists have loyal fan bases, so I look at this kind of how I look at Thanksgiving Dinner. Cooking for Thanksgiving is not a time to innovate. Give the people what they’re expecting. It’s tradition. In this case, it’s dynamic musicianship and the sound that made us love the music in the first place. I want this project to be as close as any of us in the band are going to get to playing with these artists themselves.
PP: You’ve got some great players on the bill with you including some Palladium favorites like Jeremy Carter, James Suggs, and Rebecca Zapen. Can you tell us a little about the band?
JD: We have a fantastic band. A four piece rhythm section, three horns, three strings, four background vocalists and 2 lead singers. It’s quite a sight to see all of us crammed in together.
Many of the players are past nominees and winners of the Creative Loafing Best Of The Bay “Best Instrumentalist” category. This includes Rebecca Zapen (my lovely wife) on violin, James Suggs on trumpet, Whitney James standing in for Tori Amos, and LaRue Nickelson on guitar. I don’t even share the distinction of having been singled out by the Best of the Bay. So I feel fortunate to have these monsters on stage with me.
PP: Ronnie Dee and Whitney James are both top singers. Whitney sells out the Side Door with her jazz shows. And Heather Krueger and Jamie Perlow are also stars. How did you land these talented singers?
Tori Amos
JD: I’ve known Ronnie for years and have played with him many times. He’s an absolute legend and for good reason. The man can sing and work a crowd like no one else in this area. I never considered anyone else for doing this show. Whitney I met a couple years ago and got to play with her a few times playing jazz gigs. She’s stunning. I’ve wanted to work with her for a while now. I asked her to do the Kate Bush tribute show this past summer and it was so much fun preparing for the show and performing it that I knew we had to do it again. And so here we are! Heather Krueger and Colleen Cherry are in the background vocal section. I was music director for Jobsite’s production of Lizzie: A Killer Rock Musical that ran this past Oct/Nov. I met them there and they’re now some of my favorite people on the planet.
Jamie Perlow is an incomparable vocalist and has been since I knew her in 11th grade. Jamie and I are huge Bjork fans. We flew to Colorado more than a decade ago to see Bjork play at Red Rocks. So when I thought of doing a Bjork tribute, there was no one else I considered for singing lead on that. Jamie’s gotten some recognition lately for her performance in The Florida Bjorkesta and also with David Manson’s Helios Jazz Orchestra. Her set with Helios at the Side Door a couple months ago was astounding. People are figuring out what I’ve known about Jamie for 25 years, she’s a flawless and powerful vocalist.
PP: I assume there will be a Tori set and a Peter set. Any surprises?
JD: We’re going to do two sets. One set will be Peter and the other Tori, so it’ll be like two separate shows back to back. As far as surprises go, if you’re surprised by the fact that you already love every single song we’re going to play, then you’ll be surprised. This show is 100% fan service because we’re all fans already. These songs are close to our hearts so we’ll be playing them with all the love and devotion we have.
Peter has an extensive catalog that goes back decades, even if you don’t include early Genesis. Along with the “Thanksgiving Dinner” menu, we’ll be adding some well-loved and little played favorites from the early years. For Tori, we’re paying close attention to her first two albums. Those resonated with us the most. There’s some beautiful material in there and we’ll be bringing it to the Side Door with all the love of true fans.
Red Rain will likely be sold out by showtime, so get you tickets now. Call the Palladium Box Office at 727 822-3590 or follow this link to purchase online.
Tori – Peter mash-up
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