Feature

With the Mobile Bay area’s deep European ties, one would think this would be reflected in the sounds emanating from its music scene. However, there are only a scarce number of bands here that feed off of these influences. But there is one local newcomer that has been gathering fans with its unique, Euro jazz style.

When the votes for Best New Local Band were tallied for the Nappie Awards, the E-Sho’s Roman Street came in a well-deserved close second.

Comprised of brothers/core members Josh and Noah Thompson (both on guitar) and percussionists Daniel Brett and Nik White, Roman Street’s eclectic, exotic sound has been seducing audiences on both the east and west banks of the bay.

One thing that is also impressive as well as surprising about these accomplished musicians is their ages, which range from 19 to 26. With a sound that has been classified by listeners as everything from Flamenco to Brazilian, many may wonder how these young men laid the foundation for their sound.

It is typical for beginning musicians to concentrate on what they like, and their initial repertoire consisted mainly of Dave Matthews Band covers – a far cry from where they are now. But their education served to expose them to new genres. Noah went on to study classical guitar under Mark Habib of the University of Mobile and even earned a scholarship. Then, a new style of music entered their world courtesy of Switzerland’s Tonic Strings (Toni Donadio and Nic Niedermann). They introduced them to a new style of playing – a combination of Flamenco and jazz, which they called “Gypsy Jazz.”

“The guys (Tonic Strings) ended up here first, and we heard them via our mother (Patty Thompson, Saenger Event Coordinator) and then through the Saenger Theater and through bookings at the beach and in Fairhope,” Noah explains.

“At the time, we were just getting into guitar. I had not had a lot of training before. I had played piano and things like that. I was fledgling on the guitar, and I heard these guys play and was totally taken aback. You don’t hear that kind of stuff very much on the Eastern Shore, or in Alabama, or in the Southeast for that matter. I just wanted to talk to them, and ask them ‘How did you go about doing that?’”

The Thompson family became fast friends with Donadio and Niedermann and extended a hospitable hand to their European visitors. It wasn’t until they were getting on a plane back to Switzerland that Noah asked for pointers.

“When we took them to the Mobile Airport, I’ll never forget it. They were staying at the Best Western on the Beltline. They had a little Best Western notepad. I told them, ‘I would love to learn to play your songs.’ They gave us some CDs, and they wrote out on the Best Western pad guitar theory: progressions, scales and stuff. He said, ‘Just learn this and call me,’” Noah explains.

As the months passed, the Thompson brothers corresponded with Donadio and Niedermann and passionately studied their style. Then, Josh and Noah traveled to Switzerland for one-on-one sessions at a monastery that had been converted into a music school by Donadio and Niedermann. It was there that Josh and Noah experienced their own trial by fire.

“Toni owns a restaurant down in Baden,” Josh explains. “His family owns it, and his mother actually cooks there. They play there pretty regularly – just playing around. So, we went to go see them play, and they forewarned us that they were going to get us to get up there and play a song with them. Sure enough, they called us to go up there and play a song with them. It was one song that we already knew how to play. We went through the song, and everything went fine. The crowd was receptive, and we were ready to get off the stage. We were done and wanted to watch them finish. They said, ‘Hold on just a minute. Let’s play something else.’ We didn’t know what to do, and everyone was clapping. So, we sat down, and they started to play some Russian song that they knew. They were trying to tell us to ‘play this’ and shooting out chords and keys. They had fun butchering us.”

With some training under their guitar straps, Josh and Noah returned to the States and began harvesting the artistic seeds that had been planted in Switzerland. With Brett and White doing time on percussion, they created an evolved version of the music style they had learned under their European tutors mixed with the previous influences of all the band’s members.

“We aren’t jazz players; we aren’t rock-and-roll players,” Noah explains. “We really aren’t Gypsy Jazz players either, even though all those terms have been used to coin our music. Really, we take elements from all the styles that we know about. We take a little bit from flamenco. We take a little bit from jazz (traditional, American big band jazz). We take a little bit from our Dave Matthews influences. Our percussionists used to be in hardcore bands. So, we kinda pull from all that stuff, and everybody puts in their two cents.”

Roman Street has been paying their dues with performances around the area and has been receiving tons of positive feedback. As musicians do, they have been feeding off of this positive response.

“It’s been great,” Josh says. “People every time say, ‘We never hear this around the Eastern Shore or anywhere around here.’ And to my knowledge, there’s no one around here who really does this. Mostly, upper middle-aged, 30 and above people typically are more vocal about it. People around our age are not quite as receptive.”

“It’s really bizarre,” adds Noah. “I wouldn’t consider us very accomplished guitar players, but the style is so difficult, and the music itself is written with such technicality and technical prowess and just passion in general that people just pick up on it. Instrumental music without vocals still gets to people just by virtue of the way its written and played.”

The Thompson brothers aren’t planning on making a life’s career out of their music. Noah is entering medical school, and Josh is in pre-med at Auburn University. They find playing this music as a way of molding their personalities through learning this complex style of playing, and each experience is as personally rewarding as the next.

Currently, they have one CD (“Live from Mobile Bay) available, which features exclusively Noah and Josh performing on their own. However, they plan on getting into the studio with Brett and White in the coming weeks to create a release that features the entire group. Until then, catch them at various venues in the area and don’t hesitate from experiencing this music to the fullest. When the crowd feels the music, it makes it just that more encouraging for Roman Street.

“It makes it more fun to us when people get into it,” says Josh. “Now, people actually dance when we play, and we feed off that partially because it’s passionate. The kind of music we play is passionate music, and we have fun with it. We try to instill that same kind of passion in the people who are watching. Sometimes, people will start dancing and clapping. It’s real passionate music, and we try to convey that the best that we can.”

Stephen Centanni is Lagniappe music editor. Contact him at scentanni@lagniappemobile.com.

Archives