Organ Fairchild featured at this year's Jazz + Live concert outside The Hanover Theatre
How do you describe Organ Fairchild?
On its website, the acclaimed instrumental trio — guitarist Dave Ruch, organist and keyboardist Joe Bellanti, and drummer Corey Kertzie — calls itself a "Buffalo groove funk jazz band."
The band members are veteran musicians from the Buffalo area, but that's still a bit of a mouthful. Plus, the trio sometimes gets into other music such as plaintive ballads as well, said Ruch during a recent telephone interview. "There's no good way to describe what we do," he cheerfully acknowledged.
However, he has boiled the matter down to an anacronym. FIJIR stands for Funky Instrumental Jazz Influenced Rock. "FIJIR. That gets kind of close. We're good with all of that," Ruch said.
Organ Fairchild will be bringing its funky, instrumental, jazz influenced rock to Worcester when it will be the featured act for the 7th annual Jazz+ Live (formerly Jazz at Sunset) concert at 6 p.m. Aug. 23 outside behind The Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for the Performing Arts.
Jazz+ Live is presented by 90.5 WICN Public Radio, Downtown Worcester Business Improvement District, and The Hanover Theatre. The area behind the theater will be transformed into an outdoor, picnic-style concert venue to include food trucks and cash bars.
Jazz at Sunset was a popular, long-running summer series originally presented by WICN and the EcoTarium and held on the EcoTarium’s grounds in Worcester for 22 years until 2012 . The series was revived in its new iteration and location in 2017.
'Messing around with sound'
Ruch and Organ Fairchild are no strangers to the Worcester area. Ruch's sister lives in Holden, and the trio has regularly played concerts for WICN, Ruch said.
Organ Fairchild's third album, "Songs We Didn't Write," was released in June, and the title describes matters accurately as the trio didn't write any of the numbers, unlike their first two records which were both mostly made up of original music.
"Songs We Didn't Write" includes instrumental arrangements of songs by the Beatles (a very atmospheric "Eleanor Rigby"), Bob Marley ("Them Belly Full"), Grateful Dead ("Lost Sailor" and "Lazy River Road"), Leonard Cohen ("Hallelujah"), through to Harry Styles ("Canyon Moon"). The album debuted at No. 1 on the Relix/Jambands.com Radio Chart for national airplay.
Organ Fairchild has been hitting the right notes in terms of critical and popular approval since its debut just before the pandemic hit in 2020.
Ruch, Bellanti and Kertzie have known each other since around 1983 when they were members of a group called Wild Knights, a popular Grateful Dead cover band cover band in Buffalo.
They went on to other things separately. Individually, thy have played with artists such as Bob Weir, Rob Wasserman, Robbie Krieger (The Doors), Nels Cline, Tony Rice, Strangefolk and many more. Ruch is a music performer (including with the Canal Street String Band), educator and scholar in historical and traditional music from New York state.
In 2019, the three found themselves on a stage together again performing in another friend's gig.
"It was quite by accident, Ruch said. "We just stated messing around with sounds. It felt so comfortable with each other, I wondered if the three of us could be a complete band." A short time later, Ruch called Bellanti and Kertzie with the idea "and they were both game."
'This music came tumbling out of me'
Ruch has said the name Organ Fairchild came about because the trio wanted to get the word "organ" in the title. The original idea was to call the band Organ Freeman after actor Morgan Freeman, but the name was already taken. Morgan Fairchild is a TV and film actress who received a Golden Glove nomination for Best Actress for her work on the TV prime time soap opera "Flamingo Road." She has taken the name of the trio in good stead, giving the band a video greeting.
Organ Fairchild's first album, "Brewed in Buffalo," came out in 2021 and has nine original tunes. Also in 2021, the trio was voted No. 1 out of 64 up-and-coming bands in NYS Music's New York statewide 2021 “March Madness” competition.
"Leisure Suit," released in 2023, has eight original numbers along with a cover of the Grateful Dead’s “He’s Gone.”
Ruch's "Get the Scotch Out" from, appropriately enough, "Brewed in Buffalo," recalls organ, drums and guitar trios from the 1960s, including the British band The Nice (which for a while was a trio of organ, bass guitar and drums after the lead guitarist left).
The writing of original material for Organ Fairchild "came together really quickly," Ruch said, which surprised him since his previous song-writing attempts had faltered. Lyrics were the stumbling block, but Organ Fairchild is all-instrumental.
"This music came tumbling out of me," Ruch said. He and Belanti have been "writing music for the first time in our lives ... Corey (Kertzie) has always written music."
Ruch credited the idea for "Songs We Didn't Write" to his son, who noted that Organ Fairchild performs covers in its live shows and thought a collection of them would make for a good album.
"We grew up in cover bands. It's kind of fun to re-arrange our favorite music in our format," Ruch said. That includes having an instrument pick up the lyrics.
Regarding "Eleanor Rigby," where Ruch's guitar is center stage, he said "it was just such a beautiful melody and fun to play around with."
The trio picked longtime personal favorites for "Songs We Didn't Write" but learned one new number, Styles' "Canyon Moon."
"The drummer's daughter is a big Harry Styles fan," Ruch said.
Improvisation at heart of music
For Organ Fairchild's Jazz + Live concert, Ruch said the trio will perform a mix of numbers from its albums as well as new music.
In keeping with the jazz influenced element, "improvisation is at the heart at what we do," Ruch said. If you were to see two Organ Fairchild live shows a couple of days apart "there would be a big difference."
For one thing, the trio doesn't have a standard set list, Ruch said. "There are springboards where we don't know what is going to happen ... It's great if one person starts doing something new, fresh and different. The others can pick up on that right away. We take our own cues from that and from the Grateful Dead."
Organ Fairchild concerts draw a wide age-range, Ruch said. "We get everybody. Certainly people our age, 60. But then it goes all the way down to 21-year-olds .. younger ... Maybe because we don't sing and (only) play instrumental music, maybe it connects to a wider age range."
No matter how you describe things, "We've been doing great. We're having so much fun," Ruch said. "Life has a funny way of showing us what do next sometimes."
Jazz + Live — Organ Fairchild
When: 6 p.m. Aug. 23. Gates open at 5 p.m. Please note that alcohol may not be brought in and must be purchased at the event. This event is rain or shine. There are no refunds, exchanges or rain dates.
Where: Outside behind The Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for the Performing Arts, 2 Southbridge St., Worcester
How much: $30 per person (bring your own chair) or $175 for VIP stage-front tables that seat four people. (877) 571-7469; www.thehanovertheatre.org.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Organ Fairchild set for Jazz + Live outside The Hanover Theatre
