Straight out of the Downtown NYC Neo Underground here’s the spoken word/ jazz album BLOWING THROUGH SECAUCUS by George Wallace, poet, and musicians Kevin Twigg, Thomas Santoriello and Mark Mancini.

Featuring the vocal talents of Wallace, Lee Kostrinsky, Vicki Iorio, Robert Gibbons, Kenny Gordon, Anthony Policano, Barbara Ann Branca, Charlie Pellegrino, and Phillip Giambri, this album is a rollicking musical spoken word interpretation of poems in Wallace’s 2022 eponymous chapbook collection published by Guttersnob Press.

A gala celebration of the album was held on Mar 19, 2023 in the Map Room at Bowery Electric, New York City NY.

Available on all music platforms!

DistroKid: distrokid.com/hyperfollow/georgewallacepoet/blowing-through-secaucus

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsJVPXGvjg…

GEORGE WALLACE is a New York City poet and spoken word artist. Writer in residence at Walt Whitman Birthplace, author of 40 chapbooks of poetry, editor of NYC FROM THE INSIDE (Blue Light Press), and creator of Poets Building Bridges: An International Triangulation Project. 2022-23 music albums with his poems as lyrics include Sappho’s Little Boat (Omonoia Circus, Athens Greece), Blowing Through Secaucus and Resurrection Song (Poetrybay Creative, NYC). George was a classically trained piano and organist, has performed with the NYC-based R&B band The Chessmen, and appeared on stage with Levon Helm, Thurston Moore, Joan Baez, Donovan, David Amram, Grant Hart, John Sinclair and more.

KEVIN TWIGG is a classically trained percussionist with a Bachelor of Music degree in Percussion performance from the Manhattan School of Music ‘78, who’s musical interests span all types of music, and whose goal is to help break down any barriers of music styles. His first professional engagement was at an all-girl slumber party in 1968.
Since then, he has performed in every corner of the USA. He has performed “Summer in the City” with John Sebastian, “Good Night Irene” with Henry Butler, “This Land is Our Land” with Pete Seeger, “Pull My Daisy” with David Amram, “The Times They Are a Changin’” with Michael Moore and Lester Chambers, “Summertime” with Odetta, “Mr. Bojangles” with John McEwen, “I Still Miss Someone” with John Carter Cash, “At Seventeen” with Janis Ian, “Laydown” with Melanie, “Christmas Baby (Please Come Home)” with Darlene Love on national television, accompanied a Kerouac reading by Russell Brand for BBC Television, and in concert under conductor Harvey Sollberger for a Tobias Picker composition premiere, and in a symphony orchestra at Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center under Gerard Swartz (his conducting debut).

MARK MANCINI has been playing professionally since 1974 when he played high school dances and parties in the area. He listened to the Blues as a young teenager and discovered Muddy; Lightnin’ Howlin’ Wolf and, by association, Roosevelt Sykes; Pinetop Perkins; Champion Jack Dupree; Memphis Slim, etc. Of course The Stones, The Cream; Led Zeppelin; The Paul Butterfied Blues Band; The Electric Flag; Johnny Winter and the top of the heap, The Allman Brothers all helped to give him, a white suburbanite, an identity into the Blues. “Had it not been for the “popularization” of the Blues, I may not have ever ventured forth, instead seeing the Blues as that secret language that only others could master. However, it was an amazing feat for the Blues ri be popularized in 1968 in any case. It had already been a popular style of music with Bessie Smith, Sippie Wallace and Big Mama Thornton, to name a few.” It was no surprise to Mancini when a lot of these musicians collaborated on such landmark works as: “The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions”; Fathers and Sons and the record that really put it all together for him: “Derek and The Dominoes, Layla and other Love Songs”.

TOM SANTORIELLO is a self-taught musician who grew up listening to sixties music. He discovered earlier blues influenced music, roots, fifties music, Chicago blues, Kansas City blues, jazz standards. etc. And later discovered Pan African music and world music while attending U Mass.at Amherst. He maintains a love for all music that swings and grooves.

COMMENTARY

The dean of downtown word wizardry.

John Pietaro, WFMU, Beneath the Underground, NYC NY

Cool band with a great feel!

Tommy Twilite, WXOJ, Tommy Twilite’s Poetry Pub, Northampton Ma

A marvelous melange of words and music.

  Tom Gould, Bossa Nova Beatniks, NYC NY

 A fine reinvention. I’d be down to git up with these hipsters. 

  Moe Seager, spoken word/music performer, Paris Fr

Crisp production, crystal clear lyrics from the performers underscored by a knowing trio of experienced jazz hands.

     Dave Morgan, writer and community arts organizer, Bolton UK

Always great when real poetry makes it into the world

   Jack Foley, KPFA, Cover to Co er, San Francisco CA

An excellent drink, just chill, add three olives, and serve.

  Thom Ward, former editor Boa Editions

A street-savvy and deeply authentic chorus of eight poetic voices from the NY/NJ area, This hub of local voices comes together as one voice to create a story out of Wallace’s smart, passionate, and graceful poems, a bebop story of transit and transience; city characters of all kinds resonate as part of one soulful jazz family in motion. The trio is perfectly balanced and in tune with the text and it keeps your head bopping and toe tapping to the many revelations in the rhythm. Wallace tears the cover off the wellspring of jazz and poetic talent and delivers a cool swinging blues set of poems that shows you where to go and where to get off. This is the real city deal.

      Steve Hirsch, Postbeat poet, musician, editor/publisher of Heaven Bone.

I am in love with every note and every word. The wild lush of it will smoke through your bones.

     Mimi German, poet and subversive artist, Portland, OR. 

This audio tour of potholed streets and graffiti-covered buildings left me with the urge to swig beer on the Atlantic City boardwalk. Not since Springsteen has the essence of those who live, sing, and love in the Garden State been portrayed so honestly and exquisitely.

     Deborah Hauser, poet, feminist, Suffolk County Poet Laureate

REVIEWS

Shawn Pavey, Pedestal Magazine thepedestalmagazine.com/blowing-thru-secaucusby-george-wallace-and-friends-reviewed-by-shawn-pavey/