Home » Member Page

Under The Lake

An original combination of funk, soul and jazz called "jazz, groove & attitude"

About Me

Listen and order on Bandcamp now

​”A golden moment in this modern era of jazz”

Under The Lake has been called “...effervescent, vivacious, and all-together engaging” by smoothjazz.com, considered “...possibly the next best thing since Spyro Gyra...” by Joe Montague (JazzPolice.com), and called “the most comfortable way to be engrossed in music” by Susan Frances (jazzreview.com). ​ Their latest release, 2018's Jazz, Groove, & Attitude, features John Moak (Randy Brecker, Branford Marsallis, Herbie Mann, James Moody, Dave Brubeck) on trombone and David Evans (Chuck Israels, Tom Grant, Pete Fountain, Johnny Vidacovich, Gladys Knight, The Four Tops, The Temptations) on tenor sax with special guests Nat Caranto on alto sax and Joe Powers on harmonica.

“Marrying jazz and funk in that dancing, jubilant manner often associated with the hard-driving, bottom-heavy persona of that musical hybrid, this album guides you through a solidly-structured house of groove with a balanced approach of melody, musicianship, and catchy hooks.” (The Smooth Jazz Ride).

2018 also marked Under The Lake's 25th Anniversary. Over the past 25 years UTL has garnered many notable accomplishments including: nominations for Best Pop-Jazz Album and Best Pop-Jazz Group in the 1994 San Diego Music Awards; “Up For Air” was listed by WBJB (NY/NJ) as one of the top 10 releases for 1996; Black Entertainment Television's BET on Jazz included the song “The Slider” on their Jazz Discoveries CD released and distributed by BMG Direct (1997); Radio and syndicated broadcast of songs from both CDs nationally and internationally; 1994 release “Dive In” was listed as Chartbound for 5 weeks on Gavin's NAC tracking. Under The Lake's last release ”People Together” (2007) was on the Smooth Jazz Indie Radio Chart for 11 weeks and received radio airplay throughout the country. Under The Lake recordings continue to be heard streaming on Spotify, GooglePlay, and iTunes. You can also hear tracks on the DMX and Muzak music services.

My Jazz Story

I was first exposed to jazz - at least as far as my memory serves me - when an elderly neighbor gave me his Jazz At The Philharmonic albums (78s) in the late 70's. It was about the same time as I had joined the jazz band in school. About that same time the high school jazz band came to the junior high to get us all interested. The band included Dave Weckyl (yep... same high school) and they played Weather Report's Birdland... and I was hooked. Our first band director in high school was a gent named Bert Stanley. Bert had played for Stan Kenton and he brought a little jazz influence to everything we played whether it was marching band, concert band, pep band, whatever. Those are some great memories.