Biography
Born in 1969, Gregory Ross Howe grew up in Santa Barbara, California, before pursuing higher education at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where political and environmental sciences formed his major. After returning to the West Coast he worked with the California Public Interest Group and the Patagonia Environmental Grant Program, concentrating on onsite Hazmat remediation projects that later proved useful preparation for his path in music. Howe launched his recording career by assembling a band and installing a makeshift studio inside his own living room. By the late 1990s he had opened Wide Hive at 3299 Mission Street in San Francisco, a multifaceted space that combined a record store and café, a performance venue, and a complete recording facility whose guiding purpose was stated as “to integrate musicians with community and emphasize artistic independence.” Recordings produced on the premises were sold straight to listeners at the shows. Operating within the Mission District’s eclectic atmosphere, the business disregarded conventional genre boundaries imposed by early-twenty-first-century marketing categories. The Wide Hive Records catalog that accumulated more than thirty releases over the following decade mirrored the neighborhood’s cultural multiplicity even more fully. Descended from the venue’s house band, the Wide Hive Players rest on a foundation of funky groove jazz, yet the label’s broader roster also incorporates acid jazz, salsa, rock, soul, rap, hip-hop, trip-hop, turntablism, downtempo, and assorted strains of electronica. The approach associated with Wide Hive has been characterized as honoring earlier traditions while moving toward fresh musical frontiers. Through Howe’s efforts, veteran Detroit trombonist Phil Ranelin experienced a notable resurgence via several Wide Hive releases that featured appearances by saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Wendell Harrison, bassist Henry Franklin, and hand drummer Big Danny Ray Black, also known as Big Black. Core personnel of the Wide Hive Players comprise guitarist Luke Westbrook, bassist Matt Montgomery, trombonist Mike Rinta, saxophonists Doug Rowan and George Brooks, and drummer Big Thomas McCree; one original member, trumpeter Tim Hyland, died in 2010. This compact ensemble, central to Howe’s developing achievements, has supported master guitarists Calvin Keys, Larry Coryell, and Harvey Mandel. Although his primary roles remain producer, mixer, and composer, Howe occasionally contributes guitars, synthesizers, turntables, voice, or percussion to Wide Hive sessions. The band Dissent, whose self-titled 1998 album first brought Howe and Wide Hive wider attention, was followed in 2002 by Bleeding Together, whose title evokes a milieu in which genre lines dissolve like dyes spreading across an unfolding silk painting. That same year also saw the appearance of Calvin Keys’ Detours Into Unconscious Rhythms and two provocative recordings by Howe’s Variable Unit with MC Azeem Ismail, the Afro-Jamaican-Panamanian-American rapper who gained national recognition through his work with Michael Franti & Spearhead. Howe facilitated Azeem’s collaboration with Santa Cruz DJ Zeph. Among other projects, Howe has produced recordings for vocalists Faye Carol and Jessica Cooke, rocker Ken Flagg, DJ Quest, and Mission-based JRK. In 2006 he and several Wide Hive colleagues created Salsa Blanco, a Latin soul and salsa album deeply connected to the Mission neighborhood where the label originated. After seven years in the Mission District, Wide Hive relocated to the East Bay. In 2012, now operating from Albany, Howe’s rock band the Neomythics issued New Corporate Resistance, released concurrently with Throttle Elevator Music, a robust funk-rock album featuring saxophonist Kamasi Washington and drummer Lumpy. In retrospect, Gregory Howe of Wide Hive will be recognized as an influential presence within the increasingly varied independent music culture of the early twenty-first century; he should not be mistaken for the popular East Coast guitarist Greg Howe, who was born in New York in 1963.
Albums