Nick is 25 years old – a former student of our sax player Colleen Allen’s, she recommended him. I went to see him play – hired him on the spot. no audition… We love his playful approach, he wouldn’t just find parts he would “cast” his guitar as a character in a Manteca song. He understood that he didn’t have to play all the time… he could be a tourist in the band and go and see the horns – play a line with them, then come back and hang out with the rhythm section…because we never had guitar before, when we work on “re-invention” he does not have to, because his instrument has a clean slate in the band, so if he decides that he wants to approach something with a country sound or an African Highlife sound by it’s very nature it is new to us. We have a lot of great guitar player friends who had spent the last 37 years telling us the only thing wrong with our band was no guitar player, a problem that miraculously they had the solution to.
Nick Tateishi brought such a positive energy to the creation of this new album…. we’re delighted to have Nick with us.
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