A Suttle Segue
By Eric Brace
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 7, 2001; Page WE05
S uttle Thoughts was a jazz band playing mostly sit-down events, getting more work than most bands in town, when, about three years ago, something [+]A Suttle Segue
By Eric Brace
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 7, 2001; Page WE05
S uttle Thoughts was a jazz band playing mostly sit-down events, getting more work than most bands in town, when, about three years ago, something shifted. "We'd been playing smooth jazz, contemporary jazz, for about six or seven years," says saxophonist Bryan Mills , "but we started playing a cover tune at our gigs, a Grace Jones tune, 'Slave to the Rhythm.' The type of music we mostly played wasn't really dance music, but when we'd do the Grace Jones thing, we noticed it would turn into a party. Everybody would get up and dance."
The thing that drove the audience to its feet was percussionist Chris Walker 's conga playing and then-drummer Kevin "Stixx" Marshall 's groove. They'd both been in the go-go precursor to Suttle Thoughts, Reality . "They put the go-go backbeat on that song, no question," says Mills, who had left the go-go band Proper Utensils to play in Suttle Thoughts. "You've got to be careful because, truthfully, when you start playing go-go you run the risk of being blacklisted from some of these clubs, and we were playing nice places, but people were getting up to dance to the go-go."
There's just no denying Washington's own funk groove, the syncopated dance beat that Chuck Brown essentially created about 25 years ago when he stretched out his R&B tunes with percussion breaks to keep people dancing.
"We were at the Heart & Soul Cafe one night, and I was looking at the crowd and thinking we should get James Funk down here one night," Mills says. Funk, the former frontman of go-go giants Rare Essence , led Proper Utensils when Mills was a member. "And I thought of Maiesha & the Hiphuggers , because they were playing R&B but when they'd get [former E.U. frontman] Sugar Bear up there, they got the go-go on, so I admit, I was thinking a similar thing when we asked James Funk to come down."
With Funk sitting in occasionally, Suttle Thoughts steered a course toward go-go. "Word hit the street that Funk was playing with us and our crowds just got so much bigger right away," says Mills. Hoping to find middle ground between jazz and go-go, Suttle Thoughts began offering a bit of everything at its shows. "We used to do three sets," Mills
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