The Shotgun Wedding Quintet

By Lulu McAllister

Photo by Sarah Sanger

Thug jazz,” “pub-hop,” “gangster jazz,” “jazz mafia” — call it what you want, but the avant-garde style of The Shotgun Wedding Quintet is carving a new path for hip-hop in San Francisco.

Unlike traditional hip-hop and pop groups that tend to focus on a lead, The Shotgun Wedding Quintet emphasizes the importance of each instrument with respect to the group’s overall sound. The result is a controlled chaos of rap, big band, electronic and symphonic music that vocalist Dave “Dublin” Payne-Schwirtz calls a “thinking man’s hip-hop.”

So much happens on stage at a Shotgun Wedding Quintet show that one has a hard time knowing where to look. Joe Cohen juggles the keyboard, flute and three different types of saxophones; Adam Theis alternately plucks a seven-string bass and pulls on a trombone. Gerald “P. Dub” Patrick plays various percussive instruments, including the electronic drums, and DJ/Producer “Aspect” McCarthy brings it all together electronically.

“Some tunes don’t always go over with the audience. We have a song that’s a story where the music changes constantly — like every eight bars. It throws people for a complete loop. They’ll try to start dancing and it’s undanceable,” says Dublin laughing.

Even Dublin plays the electric violin, but his primary instrument is his voice. Rapping his own version of the “vocales” style, in which lyrics are sung to the melody and rhythm of horn sections in jazz, Dublin creates “freestyle narratives” — stories based on topics chosen by audience members or taken from newspaper headlines.

“When rappers freestyle, they might throw in a few things about current events and tie it together with some self-proclaiming things about how cool they are. But when you’re creating a story, it’s more limiting because you have to stick to something, make it go somewhere,” says P.Dub.

The Quintet recorded its first official album at Coast Recorders in San Francisco over a three-year period. “It took so long to record the album because we had a production deal where the studio fronted the bill, took care of engineers and got all the equipment, but we had to come in when there weren’t paying acts recording — at night and other odd times — to fit in a session here and there,” Dublin explains.

In the studio, the band found new creativity in the process of translating live into recorded music — and vice versa. They messed around with segments recorded from previous shows to create a sampled sound. Conversely, the Quintet enlisted 18-20 additional musicians to recreate samples that had previously been “chopped up” for live shows. In live performances these pre-recorded layers generate the feeling of a full orchestra with only five musicians on stage. “Our whole vibe was to make something that sounds traditional using symphonic stuff, but is futuristic in the approach with electronic beats and samples,” says Dublin.

The group finds that MySpace has been an effective promotional vehicle, as well as some local radio spots and promotional CDs, but they consider themselves “traditionalist” in their approach to success. “We’re going to play this town until we play and it’s guaranteed that we’re going to have a great audience,” Dublin says.

Regular gigs at small staples such as Bruno’s, Black Cat and Elbo Room, have indeed helped the band develop a steady following around town. The record release party for the Quintet’s self-titled first album, held at The Independent this summer, sold out completely. “We had to turn 200 people away,” Dublin says.

Having already toured California extensively, the crew plans to head to the East Coast this year and possibly Europe next summer. In the meantime, they are working constantly on new material and have created nearly 100 songs — many of which will funnel into future records, like a concept album about the old, noir vibe of San Francisco.

Whether playing onstage at Bruno’s or collaborating in its Mission District headquarters, The Shotgun Wedding Quintet is creating sounds for the future with an ear for the past. The group will continue to redefine the local hip-hop scene and, considering their growing popularity, it will only be a matter of time before jazz mafia runs the city.

www.shotgunweddingquintet.com