Dear Friends, coming to you while listening to Kelly Jocoy’s new CD release Verities on our very own SBE Records. We recorded it some months back and it’s finally making its way into the free world. Here’s the story…

Kelly lived at 23^rd Street in Del Mar right on the beach and he was into music early—first rock bands and then his natural talent carried him into jazz. He was part of our original Dance of The Universe Orchestra and he was on our first recording You Make Me Want To Sing. We did a lot of gigging back in those days including 5 nights a week for a month straight at the same venue. We only lugged the gear once a week and we complained about it then! Little did we know that it would evolve to today's situation of a new place, a new setup every week.

Kelly was one of the main players in San Diego and was in bands with Butch Lacy, Hollis Gentry, Mike Wofford, The People Movers, and many others. He did this for fifteen years or so and then decided to change his course and take on the financial mysterioso world of bond investing. He moved to L.A., worked for Citi Bank, started a wonderful family and still kept music in his life. A year or so back he made the decision to put music more on the front burner and with this idea started upping his practice schedule and finally came to me with an idea for a recording project. He brought in his favorite tunes and we talked about some of the musicians that he wanted to collaborate with. All of the elements flowed together and in February 2007 we started the ride in creating Verities.

The songs are a mix of straight ahead jazz (Suspone, Lester Left Town, Invitation, and My Romance); new versions of classic rock hits (the Zombies Time of the Season and the Beatles’ And I Love Her); and explorations on a few modern jazz tunes (Metheny’s Facing West, Jaco’s Three Views of a Secret, Ron Carter’s De Samba, and Kenny Garrett’s Tsunami Song). And the final tune on this CD is a wonderful reading of the poem Look To This Day spoken over a classic Rob Schneiderman tune. This is one of my favorite moments on the recording.

The players are some of the best anywhere. Mike Wofford is on piano, Darek Oleszkiewicz is on bass, Tripp on sax and flute, Leonard Patton singing, Tom Aros on percussion, Gary Meek on saxophone, Kelly of course on drums and myself slinging the guitar.