Search - Professor "Louie" & The Crowmatix :: JAM

Professor Louie and the Crowmatix Aaron "Professor Louie" Hurwitz, keyboard, vocals Marie Spinosa, vocals Mike Dunn, bass Gary Burke, drums Mike DeMiccio, guitar Jam "How beautiful is the concept of the Jam! For a Jam explores the very essence of human freedom and creativity. It's a difficult art?this jamming. It's not so easy to be spontaneous and brilliant at the same time. But when it's good, it's really good." ?Ed Sanders And now, for your amusement and amazement, Professor Louie and the Crowmatix present their second album for Breeze Hill Records--Jam. Care, begone! Inhibitions, adieu! The story of how this band came to Jam begins with the artistic peregrinations of its founder, Aaron Hurwitz. Growing up in Peekskill, New York, Hurwitz tapped into the town's extensive music-education resources and learned to play piano, saxophone and accordion while he was still in high school. After graduation, Hurwitz migrated to New York City. "I took advantage of all the free workshops that were there?which were the Jazz Interactions, which was in midtown, and then you'd go up to Harlem to the Jazzmobile with Billy Taylor. Then you'd go to the Henry Street Settlement with Billy Mitchell, the sax player, and Horace Arnold, and then out in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Reggie Workman. They were all free. You could go every day. That's when I started playing gospel music with the Gospel Giants of Brooklyn." For several years during the 1970s, Hurwitz played the Black gospel circuit across the country as a member of the Gospel Giants, the Brooklyn All-Stars and the Blind Boys. "I played organ and Hammond organ?all day long," he recounts. On the side, Hurwitz also did "a lot of rock and roll and jazz gigs around Manhattan." It was at one such date that he met his future wife and bandmate, the singer/songwriter Marie Spinosa, whose album credits include Rick Danko, The Band, Mercury Rev and Four Men and a Dog. As an extension of performing, Hurwitz began learning the basics of sound engineering and record producing, initially at Workshop Recording in Queens. In the 1980s, he moved upstate to an area near Woodstock. AT NRS Studios in nearby Hurley, he engineered projects for Garth Hudson, keyboardist for the Band, and then went on to handle sessions for such artists as the Fugs, Artie Traum, Livingston Taylor, Tom Pacheco, Rory Block, Bill Keith, The Band, Graham Parker, Mercury Rev, Dave Brubeck and Jean Redpath. The Band enjoyed a resurgence of interest in the 1990s, during which time Hurwitz produced three albums for the group: Jericho (1993), High on the Hog (1996) and Jubilation (1998). To work out pre-production arrangements for recording The Band, Hurwitz assembled the cadre of musicians that would ultimately become the Crowmatix. At first, it consisted of Hurwitz, Spinosa and bassist Mike Dunn, who toured and recorded with blues legend Ernie Williams and The Wildcats, Rick Danko and is one of the finest American root bass players. On the performing front, Hurwitz found himself doing occasional duos with Rick Danko, the Band's bass player. It was Danko who, seizing on Hurwitz's real middle name, dubbed him "Professor Louie." In 1998, Hurwitz and Danko played a party in Connecticut for Quentin Ryan, owner of Breeze Hill Records. Hurwitz taped the music "for history's sake," but Ryan liked it so much he issued it as an album?Live on Breeze Hill?in the summer of 1999. The principals donated all their proceeds from the album to Greenpeace. This first venture with Breeze Hill Records prompted Ryan to propose that Danko do a solo album and that Hurwitz produce it. To the core backup ensemble of Spinosa, Dunn and himself, Hurwitz added guitarist Mike DeMiccio, known for his work with The Brubecks and Rory Block, and Danko's choice for a drummer, the much in demand Gary Burke from Bob Dylan?s Rolling Thunder Revue and Joe Jackson. After hearing these musicians behind D