Live musicians seldom appear in the spinning, throbbing world that candy ravers call home. At raves, dance mixes pound from speakers and occasionally a DJ spins and samples from a set of turntables. Dance lovers have reconciled themselves to never seeing a drum set or a guitar. Instrument-playing musicians and dancers travel in separate worlds, and never the twain shall meet.
Until now.
On Tuesday, Taylor’s Bar and Grill will host the New Deal, a group that plays for the dancer lurking within the live-music lover.
The New Deal are a trio of exclusively live musicians who create energetic music without the aid of turntables or samples. They describe their music as “live progressive breakbeat house,” explained keyboard player Jamie Shields.
Bass player Dan Kurtz, drummer Darren Shearer and keyboard player Shields formed the New Deal at a 1999 impromptu show in their home city of Toronto, Ontario.
“Darren was playing in all these really boring, bad, acid-jazz bands in these really bad clubs in Toronto,” Shields said. “One night, we figured since no one was listening anyway, we might as well make it up.”
By chance, someone taped the show.
“We basically had a CD before we had a band,” Shields said.
The band has been on tour ever since, said Mark Alghini, the band’s manager. Alghini has managed the New Deal since September 2000.
“It is all about the boys,” Alghini said. “They are wonderful people … very fun to work with.”
Currently, the New Deal have three live albums and are at work on a studio-quality LP. “But the new album will still be live,” Shields said.
The New Deal are always met with a great deal of audience enthusiasm, Shields said. The music “is not always dance. But for sure it’s improvised, and for sure it’s live.”
The band has something to offer everyone, Alghini said from his office at Nettwerk Management in New York City.
“Some people come and just dance, some people listen to melodies, and some people are just interested in what we do,” Shields said.
Shields attributes the band’s eclectic, hybrid sound to the fact that the band members don’t like the same types of music. In fact, they rarely listen to dance music.
“Darren listens to contemporary music, R & B; he’s interested in the chart world,” said Shields. “I listen to jazz funk … Frank Zappa. I really like Ween. The three of us like music that is so different that you would never think that we could be in a band and make music together.”
The Canadian group was featured in Village Voice and Spin Magazine — recognition that rarely comes to live jam bands.
In the August 2000 issue of Spin, DJ Logic called the New Deal “the Kraftwerk of the new millennium.”
On the New Deal’s EP “Guelph on Can,” complex bass riffs weave beneath twangy, fluid keyboard melodies and catchy beats.
The New Deal will be playing in Eugene on Tuesday at Taylor’s Bar and Grill on East 13th Avenue, across the street from the University of Oregon Bookstore.