Biography
Spiritual brothers to Phish and, in similar fashion, successors to the space once occupied by the Grateful Dead, Zen Tricksters have devoted the past ten years to crisscrossing the United States, performing night after night in clubs and theaters while steadily attracting listeners of every generation through their expansive, free-flowing style of improvisation. Although the group is now headquartered in New York, its origins trace back to an earlier incarnation known as the Volunteers, a band that formed around the beginning of the 1980s and devoted itself exclusively to performing Grateful Dead material. After regrouping in 1988, the musicians continued playing those covers while also composing original songs in a comparable spirit. Following the departure of singer Jennifer Markard, the ensemble was reduced to a quartet consisting of Jeff Mattson on vocals and guitar, Rob Barraco on vocals and keyboards, Klyph Black on vocals and bass, and Joe Chirco on drums. The musicians cultivated their audience through persistent touring and an ever-growing reputation for powerful live performances, drawing not only longtime Deadheads and Phriendlies but also listeners drawn to adventurous jamming and inventive improvisation. By the middle of the 1990s they had appeared in venues from Maine to Oregon and were regularly filling ballrooms and larger halls. Along the way they have shared bills with an eclectic range of artists stretching from Hot Tuna to Suzanne Vega. They have also served as the backing unit for several performers, among them Rick Danko and Bo Diddley. Although the Grateful Dead remains their central influence and its mixture of rock, blues, folk, and bluegrass is evident in their sound, classical and jazz elements are equally prominent. In 1996 Zen Tricksters committed their first collection of entirely original material to tape with the album Holy Fool; two years afterward the Zebra Tango label gave it broader distribution. The follow-up record, Love Surreal, was tracked in 1999 with the same personnel. Around the turn of the millennium further changes occurred: Barraco stepped away and was succeeded by veteran jam-band musician Pete Levin, Chirco was replaced by Alan Lerner (previously associated with Joe Gallant & Illuminati and the Dimitri Gurevitch Quintette), and Tom Circosta, an alumnus of the Volunteers, came aboard on second guitar and vocals.
Albums