Justin Time / Artist Details

Back

Links

Susie Arioli Band featuring Jordan Officer

The Susie Arioli Band exploded onto the Montreal music scene in July '98, wowing organizers of the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal and the public alike during their near-flawless set. That performance in turn garnered them a last-minute invitation to open for Ray Charles, after illness forced scheduled opener Charles Brown to cancel.

Until this moment, Susie Arioli was known mostly as a “musician's singer” who evoked an earlier sound in the way that she used her voice, and as someone who could certainly swing (she's a flawless timekeeper who uses brushes to play the snare while singing). A local jam session appearance led to her meeting the multitalented Jordan Officer, the band's lead guitarist, arranger and musical soul mate. A busy sideman in his own right, Jordan’s playing had been heard with many artists on the Montreal scene. Besides Officer, the band already included core members Shane MacKenzie on upright bass and Michael Jerome Browne on guitar.

The group originally played swing music from the 30's' and 40's, mainly from small bands (Maxine Sullivan, Jack Teagarden), big bands (Count Basie, Benny Goodman), blues (Memphis Slim, Jimmy Rushing) and even Western swing bands (Bob Wills), including songs from the great American composers such as Duke Ellington and Cole Porter. Occasionally a ‘50s tune slipped in. Their original style was aptly described by one critic as "minimalist swing" and by another as "real music for real people." Susie preferred to put it simply: “Every song tells a story and I get my thrills telling each one with passion.”

By this time no longer just the darlings of the underground set, the band began to perform for a wider audience, armed with their self-produced debut recording, It’s Wonderful (released in 2000 and later licensed to Justin Time), which, as with all of their recordings to date, has sold more than 30,000 copies to date in Canada - nearly unheard of for a group labeled “jazz” in Canada.

Susie and her group were the first artists to sell out a show at the 2000 edition of the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal (just two years after their initial success there), and their subsequently added second and third shows also sold out. Their Toronto album launch during the JVC Jazz Festival at the Top of the Senator impressed the local media in attendance. “ Susie is unerringly right in what she chooses to sing and unrivalled in how she sings it,” said Peter Goddard of the Toronto Star; and Mark Miller of the Globe & Mail found Susie's brand of swing to be “played in a manner free of the jive and posturing associated with the recent swing revival.”

Their date book now filled with jazz & blues festival appearances, concerts, clubs, parties and TV & radio appearances, Arioli and Officer were poised to explore markets beyond Canada, and plans were hatched to appear in Europe more frequently, and in venues with increasingly pleasing reputations, that would delight in their unique brand of humour, their refreshing take on classic songs, and who would grow with the band with each successive recording.

In 2001 Susie Arioli signed to Justin Time Records and work began immediately on what would become the album Pennies From Heaven, released in the spring of 2002. An interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air” in the fall of 2002 put Arioli on the radar south of the border, and sales immediately spiked.

The following year, noted producer and friend John Snyder was recruited to produce the next recording, That’s For Me. The one-time manager of Chet Baker and Grammy Award-winning producer brought to the Montreal sessions his excellent taste, his perfectionism, and his good judgement. The result would be one of Susie and Jordan’s finest records to date, on which they continued to mine in earnest the rich repertoire of classic American songwriting outside of jazz; there’s a stunning version of Johnnie Lee Wills’ “Why Do I” as well as their take on Memphis Slim’s “Mother Earth.”

Concerts in France (notably a very successful night at Paris’ Le Grand Rex) and in the USA followed to support That’s For Me, and they signed with the management team, Larivée, Cabot Champagne, also based in Montreal.

The group’s most recent recording, Learn To Smile Again, was completed in Montreal in 2005,
this time produced by Jordan Officer. It’s a well thought out statement that clearly points them in a new direction without alienating their existing fans. It also meant the expansion of the band to include a percussionist and backup vocalists.

The timeless, classic songs chosen are both elegant and evocative. Featuring six Roger Miller compositions, Learn to Smile Again avoids Miller’s overexposed compositions, opting instead to explore the underexposed pleasures found in such Miller classics as “Husbands & Wives,” “Less and Less” and “A Million Years or So.”

Of the remaining five tracks, two are new, original instrumentals by Officer; one is a beautiful cover of Irma Thomas’ “Ruler of my Heart,” and another is the group’s take on the jazz standard “By Myself.” The group’s version of the Jimmy Webb classic, “By The Time I Get to Phoenix” invites comparisons to such genre-defying Americana/roots artists as k.d. lang, Gillian Welch and Cowboy Junkies.

By deftly combining elements of blues, country, jazz and pop – the classic and the obscure – the Susie Arioli Band has created its own intoxicating sound. The group’s undisputed artistry and uncluttered sound are refreshing in an era many would agree is short on depth.