Meet The Smoogies | Band

We had the good fortune of connecting with The Smoogies and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi The, let’s talk legacy – what do you want yours to be?
We want The Smoogies to be remembered as a band that made music for the community. The whole concept of the band came from Harvel one day saying The Smoogies was a musical smoothie; a blend of cultures, sounds and influences. One day recently Vaughn said that we were making “People Music”. That moment has caused a shift in the way we are composing now for our next record and will be a theme in our music going forward. We really just set out to be a band that makes music for every day people to groove to. David, Dion, Harvel and Vaughn have all been making music in different bands of all genres an styles in separate combinations for over 10 years. There are some things we have figured out along the way with playing with each other in all of those settings. We want people to remember that our music is always vibin’ in a way that even people who don’t necessarily understand what were doing sonically can still grab on to it and bob their head or grab their partner and groove with us despite how complex or virtuosic the arrangements can get. We also want people to remember us as being musicians who gave back to the younger generations of musicians. We are 4 approachable people and we always have looked out to help the next generations of cats through lessons, mentorship, advice and so on. We want people to remember The Smoogies as a band that brings good vibes to everyone around us when we get together.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Our music is about diversity. We are constantly trying to push the music crossing all genres and boundaries that people usually have bands get stuck in a box or label. We don’t even want those labels, we just want the music to be whatever it comes out being. We are blessed to have 4 creative minds in one band; we are always pushing to discover a new sound. We got to this point today by everyone just being hard working artists. We all have put in the work and contributed in our own ways to make this happen. There always the story we tell from the first residency we got as a band – we used to roll a whole organ down the street on 79th and Biscayne, bring all of our own sound and gear to set up just to be able to play together. It was worth it in the end because the music that came out of those sessions is what you are hearing on ‘Planet Smoogies’. Anything good takes time and focus, we are grateful to have continuously grown the band name since the beginning and are going to keep pushing it. Even though we just dropped our first record ‘Planet Smoogies’ (Featuring Nicholas Payton; now out on all streaming platforms) we are already working on recording our next record in February 21’. The one thing we want the world to know about our band – would be that The Smoogies are about The World.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Since we just dropped our debut album ‘Planet Smoogies’, we would love to shout out everyone that helped play a part in the making of the record. We recorded at The Bridge (thanks Nicoles) with Andrew Yeomanson (DJ Le Spam) with assistant engineer Chris Pace. We want to shout our our videographers and editors for the album Rodlin Pierre, Jayan Bertrand, Koa Ho, Heather Kerr, and Roy Neil Hunter. Photographer Chris Nanzon for capturing us in the studio. We have to give a special thanks to Nicholas Payton for being a part of the album; it was a dream come true for us to work with him. We would also love to include a huge thanks to the brilliant Sullivan Fortner for helping the band during the recording session. We have to shout out our good friend Chad Bernstein (Guitars Over Guns) doing amazing work and always looking out for us and believing in the band sound from day 1. Thanks to Annie Christina who was our resident DJ in the early stages in our Hangout Series when we were first starting the band. And we have to thank all of the fans who show support whether its live or virtually – we appreciate all of you!

Website: https://thesmoogies.bandcamp.com/album/planet-smoogies
Instagram: @thesmoogiesband
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheSmoogies/videos
Other: https://music.apple.com/us/album/planet-smoogies/1541511390?uo=2&partnerId=11&at=10ln7k https://open.spotify.com/artist/4tibEPEN1fY1WGUxHSf8wk https://open.spotify.com/album/1szEMVNGL9EGYMt0IP6VR5