January 2007
www.magicbrook.comTake equal parts driving rhythms and pagan revival and shake, shake, shake. With his gritty vocals and wide ranging guitar work, Brook blends and bends genres from ragtime to world fusion, from jazzy ballads to whining slide guitar driven blues.
Brook's original themes start from the heart, take wing through personal transformation, move out through their connection with the natural world, and on into empowered action. His recordings can be heard on Internet stations like Split Open and Melt Radio and iSound.
Brook has worked with roots greats Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, and he has played with and supported numerous national and local musicians in just about every American musical genre from folk and blues through jazz, swing, rock, funk, soul, and country: Anne Hill, Linda Hirschhorn, Mokai, Laurie Lewis, Michaelle Goerlitz, and T. Thorn Coyle, and many others.
Brook began his career at age 19 playing acoustic bass and guitar in the Mark Levy Trio. Since then, he has performed and recorded in a wide range of contexts. Brook grew up with jazz and blues; his grandmother was married to clarinetist Jack Ogilsvee, and was a friend of Louis Armstrong. His formal education began at the Wisconsin College Conservatory, where he studied theory and jazz composition with pianist Tony King and jazz guitar with Manti Ellis.
As a bluesman, he was the lead and slide player with the Bull Frog Blues Band, touring with harmonica player, “The Reverend” Steve Weist. After the Bull Frog Band, he did a stint with bluesman and rock ‘n roll great Bo Diddley, playing for Bo's BoKay Production Company. Brook then moved to San Luis Obispo, California, where he taught jazz improvisation at Cuesta Community College and at the University of California, Los Angeles Extension.
While teaching in San Luis Obispo, he played with many of the premier blues and jazz groups and performers in the area, among them San Luis Jazz, Avanti, singer Myra Echols, Dorsey band alumnus Marty Wright, former Birdland pianist Fletcher Peck, Motown recording artist Renaldo Jackson, and the Montreux Jazz Festival Award winning Cuesta College Community Jazz Band. He produced and performed for the first annual Home Grown recording.
He also shared the stage with, or was a sideperson to, many international performers, including blues and roots music pioneer, Chuck Berry, jazz trombonist Bill Watrous, trumpeter Bobbie Shew. During this time, saxophonist Richie Cole nicknamed Brook "the bluesman".
Brook then left San Luis Obispo for San Francisco. The San Francisco Bay Area's diverse musical culture has offered him the opportunity of applying his improvisational and arranging skills to music in many idioms, while constantly improving his blues and jazz playing. He's worked with Oakland-based recording artist Linda Hirschhorn , appeared as a soloist with the Freedom Song Network at the Berkeley Jazz Festival, and was an accompanist for blues and gospel singer and composer Pat Wynne throughout the late 1980's. He played on her contribution to Original Folk on Folkways Records.
Brook has played in bands with Bruce Langhorn, Anne Hill, T. Thorn Coyle, Laurie Lewis, and Michaelle Goerlitz among others. He took Mimi Fox's vacated seat in the Joyce Baker Group, accompanying Opie Bellas for 3 years.
Brook uses the K&K's Pure and Trinity Systems: "I've tried just about every pickup for acoustic guitar. They all produce serious mid-range distortion, even through class-A preamps. Then I got a Pure Western pure for my Gitane guitar. It took me some time to find the perfect position for that guitar, but very quickly, I realized that the K&K piezos reproduce the natural sound of guitar better than any other. All four of my acoustic guitars now have K&K Pures in them. However, I wasn't done. I require the closest I can get on stage to a studio acoustic sound. My Lowden is equipped with the Trinity through the Quantum Blender. Let's just say that on the field recording of the first acoustic guitar solo that I performed on that instrument, you can hear members of the audience exclaim, 'Wow!' before applauding. What more needs to be said?"
Photos by Steve Johnson and Sammy Van Der Weijden
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