Jazz singer spices up the holidays with a new funk band

Put some soul in your holiday season with Eden Atwood and her new funk band, Blue Talk & Love, in concert on Dec. 18 at the Eagles in Kalispell.

The show is also a farewell party for Mountain Aire Music's Pat Bailey, who will be celebrating his 125th concert production. Dubbed "Pat's Funky Holiday Party," Bailey promises irrepressible good times and irresistible dance music with this 12-piece band with full horn and rhythm sections.

Eden Atwood, an internationally known jazz vocalist, has a legion of fans in the Flathead. She's done several shows here previously, both solo and with her Last Best Band, which is still going strong. The last time she was was in town, 1,500 people attended.

"Kalispell has always been one of my greatest audiences. I've been all over the world but I always get a good feeling there," she said in a recent phone interview.

With her new band, Blue Talk & Love, Atwood shares vocals with her good friend and band co-founder Stacey Gordon. The band's third vocalist, Steven Van Dort, hails from Kalispell.

"Steve sings a storm,"she said. "He sounds just like Otis Redding and he's going to wow the hometown crowd."

Other band members are well-known Missoula musicians David Horgan on guitar, Chuck Florence on tenor and alto sax, Leon Slater and Kyle Simpson on trumpets, Gary and Kyle Gillett on trombones, Jimmy Rogers on keyboards (also a member of the Bop a Dips), Mike Freemole on bass and Bob Ledbetter on drums.

Blue Talk & Love takes the classic 1960s and '70s sounds of Earth, Wind & Fire, Stevie Wonder, Al Green and Chaka Khan, and throws in a few curve balls with the music of Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee.

Atwood talked about the origin of the band's name and sang a few bars of Earth, Wind & Fire's huge hit from 1978, "September" -

"My thoughts are with you

Holding hands with your heart to see you

Only blue talk and love,

Remember how we knew love was here to stay"

"This music is great dance music," said Atwood, who credits her mother with teaching her how to swing dance when she was growing up. "It springs from the last era of partner-style era dance music. It's challenging, it gets people up and moving, and it's just so fun to play."

Atwood says if she's going to sing anything besides jazz, it has to be funk and soul. She's always had a deep love for the music of rhythm and blues artists Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack. Her jazz influences include Jimmy Scott, the late Miles Davis, Tom Harrell and Shirley Horn, along with her father, Hub Atwood, who was a big-band musician and arranger for Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Harry James and Stan Kenton. "My father always loved a good melodic line."

While a classical piano student at Chicago's Conservatory of American Music, Atwood, then 19, longed to compose her own music. She produced a demo tape that caught the attention of Bill Allen at Chicago's legendary, now defunct, Gold Star Sardine Bar and at 21, became their headliner. She would stay for eight years with breaks to accommodate her acting and modeling jobs in New York, Los Angeles and Paris.

In the early '90s she made her Manhattan singing debut in the famed Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel. Engagements at Tavern on the Green and Michael's Pub soon followed.

Her solo career has taken her as far as Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and Shanghai, China. Travels with the Last Best Band have also taken her to Brazil and Australia.

Atwood makes her home in Missoula with her husband and their 14-month old son.

The show begins at 8 p.m. Tickets for Eden Atwood and Blue Talk & Love are $15 and are available at all the downtown Coffee Traders in Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls.

SIDEBAR

The Mountain Aire Music series will continue under the direction of Marshall Noice. Well known as both an artist and photographer throughout the West, Noice is also the drummer and vocalist for Big Daddy and the Blue Notes. Concerts will continue in the new year at Mountain Aire's usual venues, the KM Building, Sons of Norway and the Eagles.

After seven years in Kalispell as a successful music store owner and concert producer for Mountain Aire and Kalispell's summertime Picnics in the Park, Bailey is bidding the Flathead goodbye and heading to the Blue Ridge mountains of Tennessee and Virginia where he will locate his music store and continue to promote live music.

When asked recently about the successful concerts he's brought to the Flathead over the years, Bailey said, "It's been a fun ride. I've really enjoyed the years here.

"It's an odd coincidence that I can do another final show. But I had the opportunity to put this show together and I love Eden. For those who remember the '70s, it's going to be a big sock hop of a a party."