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In the past, New York City-based Bacci has played private parties during the Rochester International Jazz Festival, but it has never been invited to play on an official stage — until now. The funk/folk/hip-hop group will perform at the East Avenue and Alexander Street stage on Saturday, June 20.
"We're really excited; the jazz fest has a really nice line-up in general," says drummer Paul Amorese. "And it's really a great experience for us to be playing the same bill with a lot of different names. We're opening for The Fabulous Thunderbirds, so that should be really exciting. It's going to be a great event for us."
We had a chance to speak with the Rochester-native about his favorite spots in town and the band's changing sound.
What can the audience expect from your show?
We're gonna be performing all of our original music. Our sound is best described as a cross between Sublime and Jack Johnson.
You and two other band members have ties in Rochester — what does the band like to do when you come home?
If we're ever in town on a Friday, we all love going to Beale Street for their Cajun fish fry — it's a definite must. And if we have a late night and we can stomach it, we have to get a Garbage Plate. That is something you definitely don't see outside of town. But believe it or not, if the whole band is in the car and we're trying to figure out what we're going to do while we're in Rochester, I'd say the number-one thing we do is go to Wegmans. You really miss Wegmans when you leave town.
In April you had a CD release party in Rochester. Tell me about that release.
We did a six-track CD sampler to get our fans more acclimated with our new sound. We walked into the studio and we did everything in one take — no overdubs. And then we decided it would just be a CD for our fans to just get an idea of where our sound was going for the next album [planned for a fall 2009 release] to keep them excited.
And how has your sound changed?
I feel like it's a little more polished. We're focusing on more danceable originals as well as more melodic hooks, whereas before we kind of just made music as we felt it. We took the sound from our first two albums and we're kind of culminating it into one. So we've got the hip-hop element, it's got a little bit more of a rock element, and it still has that singer/songwriter element that the band first started with.
