Eight to the Bar, Northford, CT
Listening to Eight to the Bar is a lot like driving along a time-warped highway precisely halfway between Count Basie's Kansas City and Fats Waller's Harlem, where the car radio picks up everything from Jackie Wilson to the Andrews Sisters. Their material, like their outlandish wardrobes and onstage choreo, is a colorful mix of forties jazz and swing, fifties jump blues, and their own swing and blues-influenced tunes. With their female vocals, saxophone, guitar, bass, keyboards and drums, this unique sextet pack a musical and visual wallop not seen in New England since the group's inception in 1975. Since that time they have released eleven CDs, seven videos, have appeared nationally on HBO, VH-1, and have excited audiences from the Caribbean to Europe, where they have toured several times. In 2011 the group toured the Republic of Georgia at the invitation of the US Embassy located there and currently the band is working on its 12th CD and has just been named “Best Live Band 2014” by Hartford Magazine.
