Paul Brown and the Science Gravy Orchestra have shook Columbus with their edgy jazz fusion for more than 10 years.
The trio boasts some of the best musicians in the Columbus area: Paul Brown, winner of Guitar Player magazine’s “Guitarist of the Year Award,” Andy Woodson, a highly sought-after bassist and Tony McClung, a percussion staple of the Hoo Doo Soul Band.
“We care about the music, and I’m fortunate to have talented people to play with,” Brown said.
Brown, who writes all the material, started the band in the early 1990s to bring variant pieces of music to life.
“I’d been writing a lot of tunes for quite awhile, and for the bands that I was playing in, it wasn’t appropriate material for those bands. This is more my forward-thinking pieces,” Brown said.
Brown and Woodson knew each other previously through friends and were joined by McClung after he showed up on Brown’s doorstep.
“When he won the sound thing in Guitar Player, I saw that and heard the plastic 45 (single) in the magazine and saw that he was in Columbus. I looked up his address and found him and said ‘Hey, lets play music,'” McClung said.
McClung described their music as “Americana gone terribly wrong” and sites a range of musical influences as the foundation of their sound.
Together they create and cover music that wavers from jazz to rock n’ roll sounds. They have recorded two albums and continuously play locally.
“Just to say we’ll roll out to a bar somewhere, and play Paul’s music, and make $10 a piece is really a testament of how much we like playing in this band,” Woodson said.
The core trio have added other musicians at times, including Michael Cox, to help flesh-out Brown’s musical visions.
“Over the next few months I’m going to add vibes and a saxophone player. I want more noise. I want more sound,” Brown said. “I’ve been using Science Gravy as a trio. There are a lot of tunes we can’t execute. We don’t have enough hands. I want to bring in at least four more hands to play more notes.”
Each member of the group spreads their wealth of talent around the Columbus music scene. Woodson has recorded his own albums, McClung contributes drums to the Hoo Doo Soul Band and Brown regularly plays with different musicians throughout Columbus.
In addition to playing, Brown and Woodson both teach their respected instruments at the university level, Brown at Kenyon College and Woodson at Otterbein College.
The band recorded a third album but has not set a release date.
