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Snowboy drums beat into Sutton with Shopland festival
THE cool beats of Latin Jazz are not the staple diet of your average barn dance. It's about as far removed from doesy-do your partner as it gets!
But this is the groove which will be bouncing around the hay bales and wooden beams of an undercover arena in Rochford on Friday night, when Snowboy and the Latin Section put a farmyard full of revellers into an Afro-Cuban frenzy at the Sutton with Shopland festival.
But surreal settings and people are nothing new to the globe-trotting percussionist, from Thundersley.
How can they be when you have just spent the best part of two years working with music world headline grabbers Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen and acclaimed DJ, producer and musician Mark Ronson, as well as being toasted by some of America's most impressive young minds at Yale university?
Snowboy, real name Mark Cotgrove, teamed up with Ronson - a New Yorker, born in London - for 12 months in the run-up to the release of his best selling, Brit award winning album, Version.
The album was a re-engineered collection of cover songs by the likes of the Smiths, Charlatans and Zutons, with guest vocalists, Robbie Williams, Winehouse and Allen to name but a few, putting the icing on musical arranging alchemist Ronson's many candled cake.
"I had a great time with Mark and played about 40 gigs with his band, doing the Version songs with Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen," said Snowboy, 46.
"Mark was a really nice and very talented guy. I was gobsmacked when we first met, as he already knew who I was and said he had loads of my records in his collection. You don't expect that!
"I was with him for a year and it was a fantastic experience. Mark is a gentle guy and it's refreshing to see how genuine he is, despite having been surrounded by music and celebrity all his life.
"This is the kid who had Michael Jackson round for sleep overs, Robin Williams reading him a bedtime story and his step dad Mick playing chess with David Bowie when he got up in the morning. Now that's what I call surreal!"
But after quitting his 12 months stint as a freelance percussionist and putting the focus back on his own band, Snowboy admits to feeling a lot of concern for troubled waif Winehouse, who is a daily fixture in the tabloid press for her drug related physical deterioration.
The 24-year-old Back to Black star, who boasts blockbusting vocals fit for a Bond theme, was back in the headlines this week, after allegedly punching a festival goer following her performance at Glastonbury, and has recently been diagnosed with the lung disease emphysema.
"It does worry me, as Amy is such a lovely girl," added Snowboy. "You get to know people on the road and I'd say we had a close relationship.
"She isn't a big head, but is very confident. Amy knows she has got an amazing voice.
"As for the drug taking, Amy said to me she couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. Amy told me she was just young and having a good time like everybody else. But that was 12 months ago and it looks like things have got out of hand.
"It make me sad, seeing all the pictures of her in the papers. There's so much temptation in this business and she's definitely on a slippery-slope and it all has a feeling of inevitability about it.
"But the papers paint pictures and what they don't show you is her family keeping a close eye on her. You don't hear about that. With the right support from the right people she can still record a great album in the future."
The prolific Snowboy releases his 15th album in September, Communication, on Freestyle Records, which includes a track, Snowboy's Special, especially written for him by one of his biggest musical heroes, Eddie Palmieri.
"Eddie is the king of latin music, someone I respect and one of my biggest influences - to have him write a song for my album is a massive honour," he added. "It's the equivalent of Prince or James Brown writing a song for a little funk band.
"I got to know Eddie when I was flown out to Yale University in America by a musical professor friend of mine. He introduced us and we went out for some private meals together.
"The man was so great. He treated me like an equal, while I was just doing my best to not get over excited. Before I flew back I went to a special meal at Yale, attended by some of the most gifted students.
"I thought it was a meal just for Eddie, but it was in honour of both of us and the students gave us special Yale lapel badges.
I could have died and gone to heaven at that point."
Communication promises to move even the most stubborn of feet. "It's another collection of tunes guaranteed to get you up on your feet," chipped in Snowboy. "When you listen to it, dancing will be the only option you have.
"It's the first album we have recorded as a band for four years and it was great to get back to work with the guys. It's nice that I can dip my toes into other waters, doing the percussion pop work and DJing, but my main obligation is always to the band."
Coinciding with the album, Snowboy is releasing a definitive written guide to the UK jazz dance scene, From Jazz Funk and Fusion to Acid Jazz, in October, published by Beecool.
"It's taken me 10 years to piece this book together, but it has been a developing work," he said. "I've driven up and down the motorways carrying out 200 interviews with the UK scene's most influential figures and it will be worth the wait."
Snowboy is the proverbial fingers in the pie merchant. He is set to go on tour again with singer Lisa Stansfield - "a normal northern lass who likes nothing more than a beer in the pub" - who put his drum beating hands to the test in front of a 250,000 audience crammed into Brazil's Maracana stadium.
There is also talk of him choreographing a West-end Salsa musical in London and two more sell-out shows at the legendary Ronnie Scott's jazz club in Soho to look forward to before the end of the year.
But just for now, Snowboy is happy to be playing a barn in Rochford this weekend. "I went down last year to see the James Taylor Quartet and had a great time," he added. "So I was more than happy when they invited me to play this year.
"It think this festival could get very big over the next few years. Even Glastonbury had to start somewhere. And the thing I like about it most is the organisers give local bands the chance to play alongside the headline acts.
"I've always been proud of music in the Southend area and the musicians deserve the exposure a festival like this gives."
The Sutton with Shopland festival starts tonight and runs until Saturday, July 5, at the Sutton Hall farm estate, in Rochford. For ticket and band information call 01702 530910, or visit www.swsf.co.uk
3:25pm Thursday 3rd July 2008
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