Tune into the Jazz Hacienda on CJAM 99.1 FM this Saturday, July 2, 2011 from 6 to 8 pm EST for an interview with Brian O'Neil, leader of Mr. Ho's Orchestrotica. Explaining the very name of his band, O'Neil tells the story of how he painstakingly restored the lost scores of the great Mexican band leader, Juan Garcia Esquivel, for the late 2010 album, "Mr. Ho's Orchestrotica Presents The Unforgettable Sounds of Esquivel."
"His manuscripts were lost," says O'Neil. "The story is that he didn't pay his storage bills after he left the United States and went back to Mexico in the seventies. A lot of his belongings were either destroyed or just lost.
"So about five or six years ago, I started the process of basically listening to the records in iTunes and the starting scores and finales, then transcribing."
O'Neil also discusses Mr. Ho's latest release, "Third River Rangoon," which is now charting at CJAM, and the difficulty of categorizing his style in the jazz world.
Genre aside, O'Neil will hold a virtual clinic on self-production, opening his DIY tool-kit to demonstrate how musicians can efficiently put their retired mothers to work in shipping and receiving.
"Some artists don't want to deal with that," O'Neil tells the Jazz Hacienda. "They don't want to ship CDs. I have my mom help. She does my fulfillment. I forward her all the orders. She ships them out. She's retired so it gives her something to do. There are ways to get your street team to help out and kind of keep your margins in better shape.
"She actually likes it. She calls and says, 'You've sold one to someone in Sweden. How did they find out about you?'"
For that and more, including a preview of this weekend's Jazzin' on Jefferson festival in Detroit, tune in to the Jazz Hacienda this Saturday from 6 to 8 pm EST on CJAM 99.1 FM in Windsor-Detroit. Online, the program can be heard live at www.cjam.ca and check back in this space for mp3 archives of the show after the fact.
