PROJECT GRAPEVINE – Zzaj Feature Band

As you listen to “Waiting For Daybreak“, you’ll realize that these players aren’t just “smooth jazz”… they’ve got some heavy guitar lickz & superb bass driven jazz that says FAR MORE than just “smoove”!  In their own words:  “Ron Richardson was born on November 6th, 1959 in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. The youngest of seven children, Ron was exposed to music by listening to records with his father on Friday nights, after a long work week.Ron became familiar with the music of such artists as James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, B.B. King, Jackie Wilson, and the entire Motown family. By age 12, Ron had developed a love for the sound of the electric bass.It was while listening to The Jackson Five’s ” Darling Dear” that Ron decided to ask his parents to buy him an electric bass.In April of 1972, Ron recieved his first electric bass. He began teaching himself to play by ear, listening to different records and picking out the bass notes one by one. Over the next several years Ron would be greatly influenced by the man who actually played Darling Dear, Motown’s legendary bassist James Jamerson. Ron was also greatly influenced by session bassist Chuck Rainey, Bootsy Collins, Verdine White, Robert “Pops” Popwell, Stanley Clarke, Larry Graham and Jaco Pastorious. By age 16, Ron was forced to join “Local 802” American Federation Of Musicians in N.Y.C. because he was playing in bands that often played for wedding receptions, lodge dances and concerts that were either in union venues or affiliated with the union. It was also around this time that Ron began to develop his songwriting skills. In 1984, Ron and a group of musicians did a recording with alto saxophonist Eric Wyatt that was used as the theme for a N.Y.C. T.V. news program called “Black News”. Ron and two of the other musicians, drummer, Darryl Chalmers ,and guitarist Greg Sam, formed the nucleus of the New York based jazz-funk-fusion band “Axium”. Ron composed the majority of the group’s material from it’s inception to it’s end.(1984-1989″

I definitely DIG this band!!! & you will too!