Backstep Forward began when Dave Revelli, Andrew Luthringer, Larry Cady and I played one afternoon in 1989 at a hellhole of a rehearsal studio deep in Oakland. From the first note the medley of completely improvised songs didn't stop for more than an hour. It is on the first retrospective CD entitled, "Right Off."
I had met Andrew, an extraordinary improvising electric bass player in Amherst, Massachusetts.
He had heard "wild sounds echoing through the heating vents," while waiting tables at Carburs, a restaurant right above my saxaphone practice space.
I met Dave, a whirlwind precison percussionist, while we both were studying music at San Franciso Sate. We had been in a post-Coltrane trio with Ramon Lazo, an effortlessly talented pianist.
We contacted Larry, a Miles Davis afficianado and he met us that afternoon, almost a year later due to a series of wisdom tooth extractions.
Jon Preuss, a gifted, discerning guitarist, soon joined the band and we got quite popular quite quickly, garnering very good reviews in the Guardian, BAM and even the Chronicle. We rode the crest of the improvising wave that was being fed by tireless musicians and given expression in a growing number of small clubs in Oakland and south of Market in San Francisco. We opened for Buckethead twice, for Terrence Blanchard and the Bay Area Music Awards in '92.
We played original music and all wrote, but Larry Cady's twisted heads and Jon Preuss' studied compositions were our best-suited and strongest material.
We burned out too early, mainly from obsessive rehearsing, (my fault). I do believe a twenty year reunion on the west coast for a(nother) CD would be exciting, rewarding and ear-opening.
