members | The Skamonics - London ska band

Meet the band – Nick

Aug 3, 2010 members Nick Richards Comments are off

This is the first in a series of band member profiles. We’ve asked everybody to fill in the same questionnaire.

First up is our bone man Nick.

Name: Nick Richards
What instrument do you play? Trombone

Do you have any other role in the band? being late for photo sessions

Do you have a favourite tune in the Skamonics repertoire? Alley Cat Ska

What’s the best gig you’ve ever played with the Skamonics? with other bands? It was nice to play at the 100 Club a few years ago, but it was early days for the band, and I think musically we get better all the time so maybe our most recent gig is always the best!

How did you learn to play? Mainly self taught, with advice from Annie Whitehead and Rico Rodriguez, and some lessons from Malcolm Earle-Smith

What else do you do musically? Another ska band called The Apocryphalites and a jazz big band run by Cool Boy, an old Alpha School boy. Here’s a great vid about the Alpha Boys School – the Jamaican institution that educated a huge proportion of the early ska and reggae musicians.

Who are your musical influences on your instrument – and more generally? Don Drummond (Skatalites), Fred Wesley (James Brown), Glen Pine (The Slackers), Bill Harris (Woody Herman)

As well as ska, what other types of music do you like, and who are some ofyour favourite bands or musicians? Jazz trombonists- Robin Eubanks, Frank Rosolino, Urbie Green, Jack Teagarden. Classical composers- Wagner, Mahler, Schubert, Bach

What’s the best gig you’ve ever been to (where you weren’t playing?) Maybe John Zorn at the Barbican in 2000, 3 sets the last of which was the Masada Quartet with Dave Douglas, Greg Cohen and Joey Baron. Blew my mind as to the amount of energy & inventiveness it can be possible to create and sustain with acoustic instruments.

What do you do when you are not playing music? Graphic Design is my day job, outside of that I do running, cycling, yoga, practising…

Who is the most famous person you’ve played with? The footballer Nobby Solano, I used to play in his salsa band a couple of years ago when he was playing for West Ham.

What about you would surprise other members of the band? I really want to SING!!!

Have you ever been described as a Renaissance Man? Yes

Are you the tallest trombonist in London? Probably!

The new photos are here

By skamonic

Jun 1, 2010 members, pictures Comments are off

We now have a fantastic set of new band photos.

We’ve updated the website with them so the best way to see them is to go to the photo page for the band shots and the members page to see some new moody pix of individual members.

Those who like detective work may like to work out which band member was late for the shoot and who forgot to bring their instrument.

We have have also added a new promoters page to the website where band logos and hi-res versions of six of the photos can be downloaded.

Thanks again to David for some great work.

New band pictures

By skamonic

May 30, 2010 members, pictures photo session Comments are off

We’ve just spent Sunday lunchtime have some proper professional band photos done by the very talented David Charlwood.

You can see some of his work here on Flickr.

It’s been many years since we had a band photo session. The superstitious risk is that as soon as you have proper pix the band line-up changes and the photos become out of date.

But we have now had the longest ever stable membership so we expect it can survive some photos.

Rightly we assumed that we could find somewhere quiet in the City, but not so quiet we didn’t get a parking ticket.

I expect we will be able to post some photos in the next few days.

Farewell Leo

By skamonic

Feb 19, 2010 members Leo Hornak Comments are off

Leo was the founder of the Skamonics. He brought us together in 2004, wrote the first arrangements, got us the gigs, organised the rehearsals and did all the things that band leaders do. And of course he played the keyboards too.

He then took a sabbatical to go to India, and we decided to go on without him sharing the leaders’ tasks out among the willing volunteers in the band.

While there he scored further musical triumphs by reaching the finals of the South Indian version of Pop Idol. You can read about that here.

On his return he trained as a journalist and rejoined the band. (You can read him on the ten best kitchen scales here – though inexpicably he fails to give the bebop scale as his top choice)

But the problem with being a journalist is that you never know when you will be working, and Leo has reluctantly come to the conclusion that he can no longer maintain his commitment to the Skamonics.

Our next gig on Feb 27 will therefore be the last where Leo will be playing keyboards for us.

So come along and give him a good send-off.

Without Leo, there would never have been a band.