Dusty Low has been around for only three years.
But it has its roots in a long-running reggae/ska band with a familiar name around here, Liquid Cheese, which started 15 years ago.
They share a core membership, true, but the two bands couldn’t be more different.
“The big difference,” singer-guitarist Jesse Sullivan says, “is Dusty Low is all the songs I write.”
He writes for Liquid Cheese, too, but it’s a very different, horn-driven style from the catchy-as-a-cold fusion of rock, R&B, jazz, folk and alt-country he’s created with Dusty Low.
“I’ve kind of been writing for a while and the songs that didn’t fit with Cheese I made into a little tangent and started Dusty Low,” the 28-year-old Sullivan says.
That little tangent has grown into a formidable musical ensemble that includes his older brother Sam Sullivan on vocals, trumpet and percussion, younger brother Danny “Zebo” Sullivan on drums, Gilbert Uribe (who doubles as rapper AdLib) on bass and Jamie Van Riper on guitar.
They’re all members of Cheese, too. Like Cheese, Dusty Low’s not a full-time thing. It only performs when the brothers and Uribe, who lives in Rio Rancho, N.M., are able to cross paths at the same time, including a recent run of shows here and in Austin.
Sam, 31, moved to Denver to work in the restaurant business just two days after the July 30 release of the band’s superb debut CD, “Go For Broke.”
"He's good with horn line and breaking down the three-part harmonies," Jesse says. "I think (that's) one of our strengths."
Drummer Danny, 24, is in San Diego, where he works at a golf course.
“He’s a good golfer. He could have gotten a scholarship to college if he wasn’t on a smelly bus with his brothers,” Jesse says of his younger brother, who co-wrote two of the 11 songs on "Go For Broke," which the band recorded at Clap of Thunder with producer Gabe Gonzalez.
The first time I heard the Brothers Sullivan was over the summer. They played a charity gig, doing covers of Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, James Taylor and other rockers known for their sophistication. It’s something they do on occasion, Jesse said. But these weren’t your average covers. They played them as if they were their own.
Jesse, a redhead with a distinctive, reedy voice, better-than-average guitar chops and a knack for stick-in-your-head melodies, attributes that to his music-loving parents and the ‘60s and ‘70s sounds they exposed him to as a boy.
“What got me as a young kid was just the smoothness of it,” he says. “You’re rocking out, but it’s still smooth. It’s not like you’re ripping the strings off the guitar or smashing it or pelvic thrusting in the audience. It’s so smooth but at the same time they could rock out.”
You can hear that smoothness in the songs on “Go For Broke,” two of which are posted free at dustylow.com if you want to check ‘em out.
The phrase “so smooth” echoes through out the low-key acoustic folk-jazz of “Roll Me Over,” which isn't on the CD but can be heard on their website. It features Sam’s lonely trumpet solo and a percussion-led instrumental break.
A personal favorite is “Renegade,” a funk-tinged rocker that’s got a vague Old West feel to the lyrics. It features a jazzy interlude, a murky lyric about moral choices and a catchy stop-start hook built around the refrain “throw ... them dice.” It dovetails nicely with the next song, "Old Road," with its plucky electric guitar embroidery and story of a man whose time has run out.
“Giving Up My Head” is a country-flavored rock shuffle — which has an acoustic guitar line that reminds me of Steely Dan’s “With a Gun” — about a guy whose heart has to be reeled in slowly. He’s married to his music, after all. “Well I don’t feel like settlin’ down,” Sullivan sings, “not when I’m on the road.”
There’s more where that came from. Sullivan said he has a hard time controlling his creative impulses. “I’m always far behind as far as releasing albums goes,” he says. “By the time this one came out I had a bunch of new stuff.”
But he wants to let these songs find their way first. “There’s a bunch of new songs we’ve played live,” he says. “I’m ready to go into the studio, but you’ve got to take it one album at a time, I guess.”
When he’s not gigging with Dusty Low or Liquid Cheese, Sullivan plays solo acoustic shows under his own name around the area, including Dec. 2 and 16 at the Magic Pan.
“Go For Broke” sells for $10. You can get it by posting a request on Dusty Low’s Facebook page.
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