by Bob Makin

    Deep Banana Blackout singer Jen Durkin and drummer Eric Kalb were married in Centerport, N.Y., on Sunday, Aug. 6. However they had to  postpone their honeymoon when a gig at the prestigious JVC Jazz Festival in Newport, R.I. (formerly known The Newport Jazz Festival) came through at the last-minute for Aug. 12.

    Ironically, that was one of Durkin's last gigs with the Fairfield, Conn.-based Deep Banana Blackout. She no longer wants to maintain the grassroots band's hectic touring pace on a full-time basis. So she'll form a new soul-blues band that will feature members of Deep Banana and work often with that group, with whom she'll also perform and record as a guest.    

The newest Banana is Hope Clayburn, formerly of Baaba  Seth, a jam band from Charlottesville, Va. Both Durkin and Kalb think  Clayburn's smoother vocals and multi-instrumental talent on sax, flute,  keyboards, bass and drums will bring a new dynamic to the endlessly energetic band.    

I spoke with the couple a few days before the wedding about new beginnings and a whirlwind of recent activity.

What was the best part about playing the Jammys?

    Kalb: For me, playing in the Jammy Orchestra with (The Slip bassist) Marc Friedman and Merl Saunders and John Scofield. It was kind of last minute that we finally came together. It just worked out great. The energy was great and we all played some great music.

It was a lot of fun. How 'bout for you, Jen?    

Durkin: I loved all the musicians that were there. We got to hang out with them and have a party with all the people that we've met over the years at festivals and stuff.    

Then I got to meet Susan Tedeschi who, it turns out, I know. She sat in with Frogwings. I went to Berklee (School of Music) with her in Boston. I didn't even realize that I knew her because I had never gotten a chance to see her live so it was really great.    

Both Eric and I went to school with her. So we got to hang out with her and Derek (Trucks) backstage.

Is that where the two of you met, at Berklee?   

  Kalb: Actually, we didn't know each other at Berklee.   

  Durkin: It was a pass-in-the-hallway kind of thing.   

  Kalb: We knew each by face down the road when we met up in Connecticut, like 'Oh, didn't you got to Berklee?' 'Oh yeah, I remember you.' But we didn't really know each other there.

Jen, I know you played in Tongue 'N Groove, the funk cover band that evolved into  Deep Banana Blackout. Did you play in Tongue 'N Groove Eric?

    Kalb: Yeah, that's where we met. I was playing in Tongue 'N Groove and Jen used to come down to the gigs and hang out. Eventually Jen became a backup singer in Tongue 'N Groove. And then when the lead singer left, she became the lead singer. Then Tongue 'N Groove fell apart and Deep Banana was born out of that.

Was Fuzz in Tongue 'N Groove?

    Kalb: No, Fuzz was down on Long Island. Fuzz and I go way back. We went to high school together. We've been playing together for years.

What is your perspective on playing at the Newport Jazz Festival?

    Durkin: We're pretty amazed that we were invited. That was the reason we moved the honeymoon. We were supposed to go on the honeymoon that week, but we found out after we booked the wedding we got this incredible offer to play at the Newport Jazz Festival. It's kind of an offer that you can't refuse. I was pretty amazed by that because that's one of the most prestigious jazz festivals in the country.

You think of the people who've played it, like Duke Ellington in 1956.

    Durkin: All the recordings that we have from the Newport Jazz Festival, I just can't believe we're going to play that. That's going to be the most exciting thing. But I am looking forward to the Berkfest because that's our scene. They're the people that we've played with on this national scene. But the Newport Jazz, that's another level for us.

P-Funk keyboardist Bernie Worrell will be jamming with Gov't Mule at the Waterloo Music Festival. Since P-Funk is such a big influence on the band and you've toured with Gov't Mule, do you hope to get in on that?

    Kalb: Oh yeah. We'd love to play with Bernie. And Warren's sat in with us before. We did a little tour with Gov't Mule last year on the West Coast and in the Southwest. It was really great. They're great guys.    

They respresent a great combination of our influences between Warren and Bernie because Warren has the strong blues and R&B influence and Bernie is one of the forefathers of the funk movement. That's really where it's all at for us, between blues and the funk music.

Throw a little Zappa in there and you're all set.  

  Kalb: Speaking of the blues, that Waterloo Festival in Stanhope should be good because there's this place (in Stanhope) called The Stanhope House. It's a little blues club, but a lot of great blues players have played there over the years.

    Durkin: It's a real deal blues club. They have pictures of blues legends on the wall who've played there. It's a wooden room with great sound. And the owner is this excellent dude. A real blues aficionado. He's always got some rippin' Elmore James playing.

Rob Ortiz (actually Stanhope House's talent buyer)?

    Durkin: Yeah! Yeah! He's a good guy. They treat us so good there. We have a little Jersey mob that comes to the Connecticut and New York shows. They were so pleased when we were finally playing in New Jersey. They're a great crowd.    

You mentioned how at festivals you get to hang out a little bit with bands that you're always out on the road with in a little calmer setting than one-night stands. How else are festivals good for the bands and their fans apart from club gigs?    

Kalb: There's going to be wider exposure at festival, depending on what kind of club you play. Plus, just the vibe is great. There's people who are checking out all the different acts that are there.    

For a fan it's great. I'm a big fan so I love going to the festivals and being able to play and also check out all these great bands. From that standpoint, you can't beat it. And being able to jam with all the different musicians and meet new musicians, that's been one of the best things about all this.

Jen, you're last show is going to be the Berkshire Mountain Music Festival on Aug. 13. Now are you leaving the band on a permanent basis or is it a break for you?    

Durkin: It's multi-faceted. I really want to have more time to work on developing new music and making that a priority for me. It's been tough because Deep Banana is a large group and in order to stay afloat and keep working and make sure that everybody's taken care of, we have to tour quite frequently and extensively for long periods of time. I just decided that as much as I enjoy being on the road, I think we're out a little too much. It's a little too intense for me. I don't want to force my decision upon the group so the group is going to continue to do what they want to do and I'm going to break off and do more stuff that I would like to do in my time and schedule. The door is open for me ...   

  Kalb: Yeah, definitely ...   

  Durkin: ... to sit in and do other recording projects in the future. I might be a special guest from time to time. But Deep Banana is going to go through a big change. I think it's going to be more exciting for people to come and see us because we're going to be going through this change. I'm going to get to do a side project and some other little projects that are music-related but not music performance- or writing-oriented. I've had this longtime dream of doing a radio show. I'm going to bring that to life in the fall. I'm going to be pursuing it in Connecticut in the fall. 

It's interesting to me that you guys are about to get married and you're going to leave. You could be together on the road and now you're going to be apart.

    Durkin: We've been together the last five years.   

  Kalb: Jen needs to get off the road mostly for health reasons.  It's been non-stop for the last couple of years. It's kind of a blessing because I think our relationship is going to get even better. We're always together 24-7.   

  Durkin: We get along pretty good for people who constantly work together.   

  Kalb: So that space that is needed in a relationship is going to come into play. I love playing with Jen, and I'm sure we're going to do many projects in the future together. And she's going to come back and sing with Deep Banana from time to time as a special guest. If the paths meet up again, everyone in the band is in agreement that that door is open to come back. In the meantime, Deep Banana Blackout is going to go on and continue to write new music in the same style that we've been pursuing. It's going to be great. Tell us a little bit about Hope (Clayburn)?   

Kalb: She's from the  band Baaba Seth She's a multi-instrumentalist. She plays flute, alto saxophone, keyboards.   

  Durkin: She has a soulful voice, but she's definitely different from me. She's her own person. She's not going to come into the group and be a replacement for me. She's got her own thing happening. Her own sound and style. I think it's going to be a very refreshing change to the group that I think people will be excited about. I'm excited about sitting in with the band with her in it. I think she's going  to really stimulate things.    

Kalb: She flew up from Virginia and sang most of our original tunes. They sounded great with Hope singing. But that's just the start. I think one of our main objectives is to write new music with Hope in mind, to start things fresh after the Berkfest.

It sounds great, but I gotta say, I'm really going to miss you, Jen. I've been covering music for 20 years and there have been very few vocalists who've blown me away the way you have in that you've been able to combine the raw sound of Janis Joplin with as much soul as, say, an Aretha Franklin.    

Durkin: Thank you. Those are two major influences. And certainly, Janis was influenced by Otis Redding and Howlin' Wolf and Tina Turner, and those are huge influences of mine. I feel that Janis and I are kindred spirits in that sense. Those are the voices of her time that she would go see live. She was really impressed by them. Those are people I wish I could have seen back in the day. The kind of energy that they have on stage, particularly Tina Turner and Otis Redding, has influenced me greatly, as well as a Aretha. If you talk about a triumverate of people, they are the three that are in my head when I'm on stage being the ringleader of this group of people who can improvise and play jazz, soul and funk and make it even a little harder edge with electric guitar stuff.   

  It's been a really great experience being in this group, but  I really need to be able to explore another level of being a composer and a writer on my own, to be able to stand on my own a little bit more. I do plan on having my own group at some point in the future that obviously would not gig and tour as much as Deep Banana because I don't want  to be on the road that much.   

  Kalb: Can I be in that band too?  I think I'm the first choice for any records she'd want to do.   

  Durkin: Yes (laughs).   

  Kalb: And I'd love to play with her live as much as possible.

Jen, you may be the only grassroots performer to leave a band to pursue a solo career. The fact that you're able to do so indicates how successful music can be at the grassroots level.    

Kalb: It's interesting because this isn't your typical story you see on VH-1 'Behind the Music' (laughs). Everyone in this band is becoming open to new people. Something as great a focus in the group as Jen leaving, most people would think, that's it, the band's done. But we wanted to keep it together because we like playing together, and we think there's more music that we can create as Deep Banana Blackout. And at the same time, Jen feels the need to do her own thing, and everybody is comfortable with that. I mean, we've had a long time. Jen let us know almost a year ago that this was going to happen so we've had a long time to become comfortable with it. Everybody's really supportive of each other.

What is the one thing about or experience with the band that at times gave you second thoughts about leaving?   

  Durkin: The fans begging me not leave (laughs). 'Don't leave!' I get pretty overwhelmed and little veklempt at times. I have a blockage in my connect-o-gozoid (all laugh). It kind of chokes me up a little bit. They love the group so much so it's hard.    

But I had this vision of  what I wanted to accomplish in leaving the band on a good note and have it  so that people would accept what we're doing and understand that it's not  going to destroy the group. I'll have a successful spinoff of my own, kind of  like a hit TV show. You know what I mean? Like 'The Jeffersons.'    

Durkin: I want to start my own hit TV show spinoff (laughs). I want to have some sort of spinoff of all this hard work we've done together, and then I'd like to be able to do guest appearances now and then. I've been trying to get people accepting of that. They come to the show and see it the way it is now and say, 'It's great don't change a thing.' But the thing is it can only get better with the addition of someone like Hope and a side project because then there's more gigs to go to. Maybe my band could even open for Deep Banana and stuff. It's more music. It's more gigs. It's more entertainment.    

Kalb: It's an open thing. She has her band and she can fly in and out (of Deep Banana). Even when I went out with (John) Scofield, they had a great drummer named Mark Balling who played on Fuzz's record sit in. It's that kind of openness that everybody can get involved in. It's kind of like what P-Funk became with all the different players and guys coming in and out doing their own solo projects, then coming back to the group. Really what it's all about is music and having fun and making a living.

    Durkin: And as things change, it can only get more and more exciting for people. The idea of trying to constantly reinvent Deep Banana Blackout and constantly having an influx of new music is one of way changing and evolving.

What will that project be like?

    Durkin: You know it will be very blues/soul-oriented. That's my thing. I come from a blues/gospel-base when it comes to singing. That's the stuff that I really connect with, that really gets me going. I'll always be influenced by that. I would just really like to have a huge body of work five to 10 years from now that I can say I was a part of. Some of it will be Deep Banana Blackout music and some of it will be my own.    

Eric, comment on what it was like playing on Scofield's record ('Bump'). He's a big jazz cat. It's sort of like the studio version of the Newport Jazz Festival gig. How did that lend to the credibility of you and Deep Banana Blackout?   

  Kalb: It was a dream come true. What else can I say? I've been listening to Sco's music for years and years. He turned out to be such an amazing guy on top of all this great music he's put out.    

Durkin: He's so down-to-earth.

And he loves this scene.

    Kalb: Yeah. He really sees a lot of the greatness that's coming out of this scene, the improvisation. He really enjoys it. It was just a really amazing experience to hang out at his house and make music freely with him. He's very open to ideas. He wanted to bring me into the studio. We just kind of went with it. Before you know I'm playing in the studio with Sco.

Jen, your brother, Johnny Durkin, also was on 'Bump.'

  Kalb: Yup. He played percussion. A friend of mine, Dave Livolsi, we go way back to Berklee days ...   

  Durkin: ... We played in Tongue 'N Groove together.   

  Kalb: Yeah. Then, of course, there's Chris Wood (from Medeski, Martin and Wood) who played bass on three tracks. At one point when it was me, Chris and Sco, I was in heaven (laughs).    

It was fantastic, some really magical stuff. Then to be able to go out on tour with Sco and do those dates. I'm thankful that Deep Banana afforded me that time and it worked out because that was a great opportunity. We had so much fun out on the road. We just took the music from 'Bump' and then all these extensions came out of it. There was a lot of improvisation.    

It's kind of like what Jen was saying. There's certain things that you crave that you're not really getting from playing in the band. Although playing in a band like Deep Banana Blackout is satisfying a lot of your needs, there's things that you want to explore that you can't really get. So Sco satisfied that in me. I'm still satisfied now (laughs).

One final question, how do you think the addition of Hope will change the energy level of the band?   

  Kalb: Well I don't think it will decrease. I would like to see it taper  off because sometimes, to be quite honest, the energy level is too much for  me. Between what I'm doing and Fuzzy's doing and Jen and then the crowd gets  insane, it's almost too much. It can be overwhelming.   

  Durkin: It's good having levels to the music. It's great the crowd is screaming, but there's also greatness in the silences, when they're standing there with their mouths open, amazed, like, 'That's a heavy musical thing happening right now. I'm not dancing my ass off now' because it's tuned to another level.   

  Kalb: The energy mania of it all is really effective   

  Durkin: It's nice to end the night with that.    

Kalb: But the other level, where we come down to a pindrop and do something  really slow and soulful, that's another energy we haven't tapped into enough.  We'd like to get to do things like that so it's equally effective. You don't  want to be too much of the same thing.     Durkin: You want to use a lot of different colors in the painting.

Bob Makin is an entertainment writer for Gannett NJ. Jam bands are welcome to send him material at Courier News, P.O. Box 6600, Bridgewater, NJ 08807 and email information to makinclan@aol.com