A band 30 years in the making, sort of, will hit the stage at George’s Majestic Lounge Friday night. Soul Merchant first formed in 1996. Rob Wells, the host of KUAF’s Jazz Scoop every Saturday night, recently talked with Ozarks at Large’s Kyle Kellams about the band.
Rob says this isn’t a reunion, but more of a revival.
Rob Wells: It’s a soul revival. So this story involves a really ambitious musical project back in 1996 that’s led by Jody Andrews. She’s a Fayetteville musician. You’ve seen her. We’ve all seen her on stage. She’s like a backbone of the local music scene.
Kyle Kellams: Yeah.
Rob Wells: Jody and her husband, Matt Perrine, who’s a great guitar player, really fine lead player. They play in Leah and the Mojo Doctors and the Don Cate Band. Those are two pretty hard rock and blues bands. You see them at Bikes, Blues & BBQ and George’s and many other places.
So the story is that Jody, back in 1996, had a band, a big band called Soul Merchant, and she’s reviving the band, and they’re going to play February 13 at George’s, Friday, February 13. And the original Soul Merchant, they played all over Arkansas. They played the music of Tower of Power, James Brown, Albert King, and I’ve listened to the demos, and there’s pretty great stuff.
So here’s a demo that the band cut back in the day. I actually digitized the cassette tape myself in the sound lab. And so here we go. Here’s the original Soul Merchant.
Kyle Kellams: All right. So that’s 30 years ago. The band Soul Merchant.
Rob Wells: That’s right, that was a great Albert King tune, "Breaking Up Somebody’s Home." Boy, those lyrics are lethal.
So that’s the demo from 1996 with Jody Andrews on lead vocal. And I sat down with Jody last week and had her describe the band’s history. She had this vision of getting a full funk band together, and the original incarnation, she got local music students and faculty to join the band. Here’s Jody describing the original Soul Merchant.
All of these players are academics, and I just love that so much. A horn band is a different beast. I come from blues and rock bands, and blues and rock bands can just get together and jam, but horn sections is a whole nother situation. And you’ve got to have really structured format and so on and so forth. So it’s just a different beast. And it’s part of why it’s so great.
Kyle Kellams: All right. So the original Soul Merchant formed in 1996. They’re going to perform February 13 at George’s in 2016. What’s new or different or the same for the band?
Rob Wells: Well, it’s all new. And it’s almost double the size. This is a pretty ambitious project. So it’s an 11-piece funk band now with Jody on lead vocal and guitar, Matt Perrine on lead guitar, Wayne Young on drums, Andy Oberg on keys playing a pretty mean Hammond B3, Hudson Crown on bass, Austin Farnham on tenor, Jason Marshall on trombone, Jack Young on trumpet, and this great vocal lineup with Leah Spears Blackman and Don Cate on background vocals.
Kyle Kellams: Wow.
Rob Wells: Some power there. Alicia Pattillo will join us on saxophone at a gig they’re going to do in September, but she won’t be in this show this week. So here’s Jody again describing how all this came together.
Sometimes you just kind of sit back and watch a path unfold. You almost have no control over it. And that’s what happened here. I didn’t go about rebuilding Soul Merchant like that. It was not in my mind to do that. I just thought, here’s some music I want to play. And then I added a player and added a player, and all of a sudden it’s like, wow. And it just turned into that.
Kyle Kellams: What did you say, 11 members in this band? And then it’ll be 12 in September. Wow. How do you put that all together?
Rob Wells: Well, she has the connections in the local music community. She has a reputation. She’s a very generous person. And a lot of people like to work with her. Alicia Pattillo is your top sax player, probably in the whole state of Arkansas. And she just got a text from Jody. She says, "Yeah, I’m in. No problem." So it was no problem for Jody to recruit people.
But these sorts of projects are like a labor of love. I knew someone who put a big band together once, a singer named Suede up in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. And she went out and hired an amazing band, full big band section, paid for it out of her own pocket. And I think there were just one or two public performances.
Kyle Kellams: Understandably. It takes a lot of work.
Rob Wells: And so these projects are really special, and they’re ephemeral.
Kyle Kellams: So you got a chance on Friday, Feb. 13, at George’s to see and hear them.
Rob Wells: That’s right. I guess they’re going to start at 5:45. The show starts at 5:45, and then they’re going to have another performance in September. And so here’s a recording of the new band in rehearsal playing Tower of Power's "Don’t change horses in the middle of the street."
Kyle Kellams: All right. I can’t wait to hear more from you. Rob Wells on Jazz Scoop every Saturday night on 91.3 KUAF. Thanks, as always, for visiting Ozarks at Large.
Rob Wells: Really happy to do it. Great to talk to you.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
