Now in its fourth decade, Butterbean Jazz Quartet is one of the great survivors of the RVA music scene. The band’s long-running Sunday night gig at Bottoms Up Pizza launched in 1991, the year the restaurant opened in the Shockoe Bottom triangle defined by the railroad line, Route 95, and the big southward curve of the James River.
The group’s appearance this week on JAMInc’s musical series at In Your Ear Studios, featuring a program of classic Burt Bacharach songs, is a kind of COVID-belated 30th anniversary celebration.
Over the decades, the band has evolved and adjusted to departures, returns, and the inevitable cross-current connections of the local music scene. The lineup for this week’s show is Rusty Farmer on bass, Lee Covington on keyboards, Charles Arthur on guitar, Scott Clark on drums, and Laura Ann Singh on vocals, plus horns from Bob Miller and Timothy Lett. If that sounds to you like too many members for a quartet, you are not wrong. The band has been through a lot of changes.
“I was still in high school when Zip Irvin put the band together with John Winn and Jim Dudley alternating on vocals,” Farmer recalls. “David Yoh was the early bassist, but they were a drum-less trio until they added Aaron Binder.” The Bottoms Up gig started in the pre-floodwall era when that part of town was occasionally underwater. Dock Street was basically a dirt road. But the restaurant was quickly successful.
“At first, the whole restaurant was what is now the bar area,” Farmer says. “On Sunday nights, they were the only thing down there. They were always slammed, with a 45-minute wait to get in. If the weather was nice, they would open up the patio, but it wasn’t enclosed at that time.” Rusty’s brother, guitarist Penn Farmer, joined the group in its second year. Rusty followed later, along with vocalist Terri Simpson. “Penn, Terri, and I had had been playing a regular gig at The Hard Shell, so we already had a repertoire that easily fit in with the Butterbean’s.”
A lot has changed over the decades. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Shockoe Bottom was ablaze with now vanished clubs and nightlife. Bottoms Up expended to meet demand, but never so much that they were crushed by hits to the business cycle. With a few short breaks along the way, the Butterbean’s venerable gig weathered the storms.
Just before the recent pandemic downturn hit, Farmer was experimenting with instrumental programs focusing on individual artists. “We would do a Horace Silver night, or Chet Baker, or Freddy Hubbard.” A previous edition of the band, with Simpson on vocals, did a version of Burt Bacharach’s “Walk on By” on the self-titled 2009 CD. With Laura Ann Singh, the area’s premier vocal interpreter of Brazilian music in the mix, the Bossa Nova- influenced composer was a natural choice.
“[Bachrach] has always been a big influence on me,” Farmer says. “The songs are so wonderful, and they are always more complex than you realize. Where most songs are made of an even number of phrases, two to four measures long, he uses three measure-phrases, or five. He’ll switch the structure to create this jumpy rhythm. There is an element of surprise. The lyrics are so great, people don’t really think about it. It just flows. But when you are playing it, you notice.”
The iconoclastic approach – integrating jazz chords and unusual time signatures – got some initial pushback at the legendary song factory in the New York City Brill Building where he wrote, mostly in collaboration with lyricist Hal David. But those were blown away by his breakaway success. Bacharach wrote over 70 top 40 hits in his career. Over a thousand artists covered his songs. He started his career collaborating with Marlene Dietrich and ended it working with Elvis Costello. There is a deep book to draw from: “This Guy’s in Love,” “Close to You,” “Alfie,” “What the World Needs Now (is Love Sweet Love)” – just to scratch the surface.
The upcoming Butterbean performance takes place in the intimate, 70-seat acoustic sanctum of In Your Ear Studios in Shockoe Bottom. [Update: They are not streaming the concert this time, according to participants, so you will need to be there to hear it].
Butterbean Jazz Quartet plays at In Your Ear, W 1813 E Broad St, on Wednesday, Nov. 1. Doors are at 7 p.m., two sets start at 7:30. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door. Bring your own refreshments.
