The Codetalkers
Encyclopedia
The Codetalkers were a jazz
, rock and roll
band from Savannah
, Georgia
, composed of Bobby Lee Rodgers, (lead vocals, electric banjo
, guitar
, "air trombone"), Mark Raudabaugh (drums
, vocals) and Andrew Altman (bass
, vocals). The band was formed in 1999, upon the meeting of Rodgers and Col. Bruce Hampton
at a show at the Variety Playhouse
in Atlanta. The group toured for many years as a four piece with the line up of Rodgers, Hampton, Greenwell and Pecchio. In the spring of 2006, the band announced they would be touring without Hampton, who was stepping down for a multitude of reasons. The band was aiming to undertake a heavy touring schedule in support of their recent release, in which Hampton was unwilling and unable to participate. He had lent his name to the project for years in order to help Rodgers gain the recognition Hampton felt he deserved, but as a touring musician for 40 years, the grueling demands that a national tour would place on him didn't seem very alluring. Coincidentally, just as this announcement was to be made, Hampton trumped the press release by citing his own health reasons for leaving the band.
Since 2006, the group had toured as a "power trio" first with Rodgers, Greenwell and Pecchio, and from June 2007 on with the latter two replaced by Raudabaugh and Altman, respectively. Raudabaugh and Altman share Rodgers' college-level musical education in jazz and have helped bring Rodgers' vision for his music back to the place where he felt it was best represented. During a show in Savannah, where Rodgers first met Raudabaugh and Altman, the songwriter confidently proclaimed that the sound and vision of his music that he had been searching for had been found.
Their music has been described as a mix of jazz
, rock
, blues
, bluegrass
and funk
with improvised jams
being the main theme in their live performances. Some of their unique sound comes from their use of a rotating Leslie cabinet used for Rodgers' guitar. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5575715
The Codetalkers had a reputation among the jam band
crowd for entertaining fans not only with their music, but with their antics on stage. They were also a taper friendly band, who encouraged the taping and trading of their live shows, provided that no money exchanges hands. The band was also known for having guest musicians frequently join them for all or part of a show. Some notable on-stage guests of The Codetalkers have been Jimmy Herring
, Derek Trucks
, Bob Weir
, Mike Gordon
, Hubert Sumlin
, Ron Holloway
and Ike Stubblefield
(about whom Rodgers has penned a song bearing his moniker).
While primarily playing the bulk of their live performances east of the Mississippi River
in the United States, the band also played several music festivals each year, such as Vegoose
in 2005 and Bonnaroo
in 2002 and 2006. In May 2008, the band played two shows in Tokyo and were invited back for a full-blown tour in early 2009 following the release of their next album.
Bobby Lee Rodgers is the primary songwriter responsible for the original material played by the band, and has collaborated on some songs with other band members as well. Rodgers is reported to be a great-nephew of Richard Rodgers
(of Rodgers & Hamerstein fame. He was one of the youngest professors ever to teach at the Berklee College of Music
(the world's largest music college) joining Pat Metheny
who is also among those ranks. His background is mostly in the jazz world (he was a professor of jazz studies at Berklee) but played bluegrass as a child (his first instrument was the upright bass, which he picked up at the age of seven.) Rodgers' songwriting and instrumental/vocal skills has led him to great places, most recently as the band-leader for Herring/Rodgers/Sipe, formed with Jimmy Herring (Aquarium Rescue Unit
, The Allman Brothers, The Dead
, Phil Lesh & Friends & Widespread Panic
)) Jeff Sipe (Aquarium Rescue Unit
, Phil Lesh & Friends,Mark van Allen (Sugarland
, Blueground Undergrass) and Neal Fountain (Fiji Mariners). Herring/Rodgers/Sipe toured in late May and summer of 2006. The majority of the songs played by H/R/S were written by Rodgers.
According to his website, Bobby Lee Rodgers officially disbanded The Codetalkers in early 2009, not citing any specific reasons, but stating that he is excited to be working on several collaborative projects with other artists and has an upcoming solo album due out soon.
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
band from Savannah
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
, Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
, composed of Bobby Lee Rodgers, (lead vocals, electric banjo
Banjo
In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...
, guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, "air trombone"), Mark Raudabaugh (drums
Drum kit
A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
, vocals) and Andrew Altman (bass
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, vocals). The band was formed in 1999, upon the meeting of Rodgers and Col. Bruce Hampton
Bruce Hampton
Bruce Hampton is a surrealist American musician. In the late 1960s he was a founding member of Atlanta, Georgia's avant-garde Hampton Grease Band...
at a show at the Variety Playhouse
Variety Playhouse
Variety Playhouse is a music venue in the Little Five Points neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is located on Euclid Avenue and features a variety of music acts including rock, country, folk, bluegrass, jazz, blues and world music as well as other live shows.-Details:The building...
in Atlanta. The group toured for many years as a four piece with the line up of Rodgers, Hampton, Greenwell and Pecchio. In the spring of 2006, the band announced they would be touring without Hampton, who was stepping down for a multitude of reasons. The band was aiming to undertake a heavy touring schedule in support of their recent release, in which Hampton was unwilling and unable to participate. He had lent his name to the project for years in order to help Rodgers gain the recognition Hampton felt he deserved, but as a touring musician for 40 years, the grueling demands that a national tour would place on him didn't seem very alluring. Coincidentally, just as this announcement was to be made, Hampton trumped the press release by citing his own health reasons for leaving the band.
Since 2006, the group had toured as a "power trio" first with Rodgers, Greenwell and Pecchio, and from June 2007 on with the latter two replaced by Raudabaugh and Altman, respectively. Raudabaugh and Altman share Rodgers' college-level musical education in jazz and have helped bring Rodgers' vision for his music back to the place where he felt it was best represented. During a show in Savannah, where Rodgers first met Raudabaugh and Altman, the songwriter confidently proclaimed that the sound and vision of his music that he had been searching for had been found.
Their music has been described as a mix of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, rock
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, bluegrass
Bluegrass music
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music...
and funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
with improvised jams
Jam session
Jam sessions are often used by musicians to develop new material, find suitable arrangements, or simply as a social gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be loosely based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one...
being the main theme in their live performances. Some of their unique sound comes from their use of a rotating Leslie cabinet used for Rodgers' guitar. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5575715
The Codetalkers had a reputation among the jam band
Jam band
-Ambiguity:By the late 1990s use of the term jam band also became ambiguous. An editorial at jamband.com suggested that any band of which a primary band such as Phish has done a cover of be included as jam band. The example was including New York post-punk band Talking Heads after Phish performed...
crowd for entertaining fans not only with their music, but with their antics on stage. They were also a taper friendly band, who encouraged the taping and trading of their live shows, provided that no money exchanges hands. The band was also known for having guest musicians frequently join them for all or part of a show. Some notable on-stage guests of The Codetalkers have been Jimmy Herring
Jimmy Herring
Jimmy Herring is an American guitarist who is currently the lead guitarist in the band Widespread Panic. Herring is a founding member of Aquarium Rescue Unit and Jazz is Dead...
, Derek Trucks
Derek Trucks
Derek Trucks is a Grammy Award-winning, American guitarist, songwriter, and record producer. He founded The Derek Trucks Band and worked as a session musician when he was still in his early teens. Throughout those teenage years, he toured with The Allman Brothers Band primarily as a slide...
, Bob Weir
Bob Weir
Bob Weir is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist, most recognized as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. After the Grateful Dead disbanded in 1995, Weir performed with The Other Ones, later known as The Dead, together with other former members of the Grateful Dead...
, Mike Gordon
Mike Gordon
Mike Gordon is a bass guitar player and vocalist most noted for his work with the rock band Phish. Gordon is also an accomplished banjo player, and is proficient at piano, guitar, harmonica and percussion...
, Hubert Sumlin
Hubert Sumlin
Hubert Sumlin is an American Chicago blues and electric blues guitarist and singer, best known for his celebrated work, from 1955, as guitarist in Howlin' Wolf's band. His singular playing is characterized by "wrenched, shattering bursts of notes, sudden cliff-hanger silences and daring rhythmic...
, Ron Holloway
Ron Holloway
Ronald Edward "Ron" Holloway is an American tenor saxophonist. He is listed in the Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz where veteran jazz critic Ira Gitler described Holloway as a "bear-down-hard-bopper who can blow authentic R&B and croon a ballad with warm, blue feeling." Holloway is the recipient...
and Ike Stubblefield
Ike Stubblefield
Ike Stubblefield was born in Toledo, Ohio, June 7, 1952, and at age 3 was already reaching for the piano. He was soon playing his big sister's piano lessons by ear, a sign of his talent to come...
(about whom Rodgers has penned a song bearing his moniker).
While primarily playing the bulk of their live performances east of the Mississippi River
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
in the United States, the band also played several music festivals each year, such as Vegoose
Vegoose
Vegoose was an annual Halloween music and arts festival that took place in 2005, 2006, and 2007 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Unlike the Bonnaroo Music Festival — put on by the same organizers, Superfly Productions and AC Entertainment — Vegoose does not offer on-site camping...
in 2005 and Bonnaroo
Bonnaroo Music Festival
The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is an annual four day music festival created and produced by Superfly Productions and AC Entertainment, held at Great Stage Park on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee. It hosted its tenth annual event June 9–12, 2011...
in 2002 and 2006. In May 2008, the band played two shows in Tokyo and were invited back for a full-blown tour in early 2009 following the release of their next album.
Bobby Lee Rodgers is the primary songwriter responsible for the original material played by the band, and has collaborated on some songs with other band members as well. Rodgers is reported to be a great-nephew of Richard Rodgers
Richard Rodgers
Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...
(of Rodgers & Hamerstein fame. He was one of the youngest professors ever to teach at the Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known primarily as a school for jazz, rock and popular music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including hip...
(the world's largest music college) joining Pat Metheny
Pat Metheny
Patrick Bruce "Pat" Metheny is an American jazz guitarist and composer.One of the most successful and critically acclaimed jazz musicians to come to prominence in the 1970s and '80s, he is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works and other side projects...
who is also among those ranks. His background is mostly in the jazz world (he was a professor of jazz studies at Berklee) but played bluegrass as a child (his first instrument was the upright bass, which he picked up at the age of seven.) Rodgers' songwriting and instrumental/vocal skills has led him to great places, most recently as the band-leader for Herring/Rodgers/Sipe, formed with Jimmy Herring (Aquarium Rescue Unit
Aquarium Rescue Unit
Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit is an experimental rock group originally founded by Col. Bruce Hampton. The band gained popularity in the Atlanta club scene in the early 1990s and went on to tour with the first H.O.R.D.E. Tour. During the initial years, the band was composed of...
, The Allman Brothers, The Dead
The Dead
The Dead may refer to:* The dead, those who have experienced death* 'The Dead' , by Rupert Brooke* "The Dead" , by James Joyce* The Dead , adapted from Joyce's story* James Joyce's The Dead, Broadway musical...
, Phil Lesh & Friends & Widespread Panic
Widespread Panic
Widespread Panic is an American rock band from Athens, Georgia. The current lineup includes guitarist/singer John Bell, bassist Dave Schools, drummer Todd Nance, percussionist Domingo "Sunny" Ortiz, keyboardist John "JoJo" Hermann, and guitarist Jimmy Herring...
)) Jeff Sipe (Aquarium Rescue Unit
Aquarium Rescue Unit
Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit is an experimental rock group originally founded by Col. Bruce Hampton. The band gained popularity in the Atlanta club scene in the early 1990s and went on to tour with the first H.O.R.D.E. Tour. During the initial years, the band was composed of...
, Phil Lesh & Friends,Mark van Allen (Sugarland
Sugarland (band)
Sugarland, an American country music duo, is composed of singer–songwriters Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush . Sugarland was founded in 2002 by Kristen Hall with Bush and ultimately became a trio after hiring Jennifer Nettles as lead singer...
, Blueground Undergrass) and Neal Fountain (Fiji Mariners). Herring/Rodgers/Sipe toured in late May and summer of 2006. The majority of the songs played by H/R/S were written by Rodgers.
According to his website, Bobby Lee Rodgers officially disbanded The Codetalkers in early 2009, not citing any specific reasons, but stating that he is excited to be working on several collaborative projects with other artists and has an upcoming solo album due out soon.
Discography
- 2000 Bootleg Live
- 2004 Deluxe Edition (re-release in 2005, aka "Dee-Lux Uh-dish-un")
- 2006 Now
- 2008 Galaxy Girl (Japanese-only release)
External links
- Bobby Lee Rodgers official website
- The Codetalkers collection at the Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
's live music archive - "The Codetalkers: A Language of Funk and Fun", an interview on NPR's Morning Edition on July 24, 2006, retrieved July 24, 2006
- Codetalkers official myspace page
- http://media.www.redandblack.com/media/storage/paper871/news/2000/11/02/Variety/Oteil.Burbridge.Will.Funk.You.Up-2591485.shtml
- Interview from honesttune.com