5 Quick Questions with the Shawn Owens Project Trio

The Shawn Owens Project Trio releases Jazz Hands II. This adventurous project consists of drummer Shawn Owens, pianist Christian Bohnenstengel, and bassist Ryan Tilby. Music was written by Christian...
PHOTO BY CHRISTIAN BOHNENSTENGEL

The Shawn Owens Project Trio releases Jazz Hands II. This adventurous project consists of drummer Shawn Owens, pianist Christian Bohnenstengel, and bassist Ryan Tilby. Music was written by Christian Bohnenstengel, recording is by Ryan Tilby.
Jazz Hands II consists of nine tracks: “Owens Loop,” “Taking Diagonal,” “On Flood St.,” “Indigo,” “Turtle Wall,” “City Creek,” “Whiptail,” “Silver Reef,” and “Owen’s Loop (Take 2).”
Owens recently answered 5 Quick Questions about his group’s new album, touring plans, etc. Here’s how it went.

THE SHAWN OWENS PROJECT TRIO JAZZ HANDS II CD COVER 

Talk a bit about your new album, “Jazz Hands II” by The Shawn Owens Project Trio?
• Owens: The new album Jazz Hands II is a follow-up to our first album titled Jazz Hands. The first album is all covers of jazz standards that have important meaning to us. For the follow up album “Jazz Hands II” we did all original music. Christian had been writing songs, but we were busy gigging to really do anything with them. When the pandemic happened, and all of our shows were canceled, it freed us up to focus on the new material. Since we could not control the virus or how the world was reacting to it, we decided to use it to our advantage. We used the time we now had to record the new album. I believe we got a much better product because we were not trying to fit recording into a busy schedule since our schedule was cleared and we were able to take our time.

Where you live in Utah isn’t necessarily a hotbed of jazz lol. What inspired you to make this record?
• Owens: Southern Utah may not be a hotbed of jazz, but we do have a lot of amazing players here and to be honest a lot of people over 65 who grew up on jazz. Location was not a driving force to make the album however it did inspire the songs. We are artists as well as creators and our medium is music. We were gigging a lot and putting original songs into our set. After shows we would always get at least 1 person ask about the original tunes, so we took that as a sign that our music needed to be recorded and set loose on the world.


How did you meet the bandmates who perform with you on Jazz Hands II?
• Owens: I met Christian many years ago while playing with another local jazz group. That band was also busy and one day we needed a substitute piano player for a gig and a friend of the group, who just happened to be the director of jazz studies at our local university suggested we contact Christian. Turns out Christian was a Dr. of music at S.U.U. (Southern Utah University) and joined us for the gig. Christian was an amazing musician and human being. Christian and I jelled together immediately, and our styles matched perfectly. This led us to playing together more frequently so when I decided to form my own group Christian is who I asked to be a part of it. The bass player on the album is Ryan Tilby and he has been a force in the music scene in southern Utah for as long as I have lived here (22 years). I have played many gigs with Ryan in those 22 years as a session player and have recorded many albums in the studio he worked at before opening his own recording studio. Ryan is a great recording engineer and multi-instrumentalist with bass being one instrument he plays very well. When I reached out to Ryan about being the recording engineer on the album he immediately said yes and said he would also love to play bass as well. I quickly jumped at the opportunity to have Ryan play bass and agreed. Since Ryan has a master’s degree from Berkley and knows jazz and sound engineering it was a no brainer.


So how are they treating musicians and the original live music scene in Utah these days, are musicians able to gig there now with Covid, etc.?
• Owens: Southern Utah is a unique place for sure when it comes to the music scene. The scene is fairly good for such a small place, and I have found there is plenty of gigs to go around. The rock/blues bands have the bars, The symphony has a great theater, and the singer song writers and jazz guys have the coffee shops, weddings, and special events. Being such a conservative based location, everything is back open and in full swing. There are still some performers as well as members of the public that are still playing it safe with the virus and we respect that choice. Some of the venues are still limiting occupancy to keep social distance but it is overall closer to “normal” pre covid conditions.


Finally, what are your hopes and expectations with the new record, and will you be gigging in support of it?
• Owens: Our hope with the album is to get our music into the ears of as many people as possible. We also hope to be able to get more opportunities to share our music live. We would love to be invited to play in many of the jazz festivals held in the U.S and abroad. We will be trying to line up and play as many shows as possible in the upcoming future. If we can bring a little bit of joy or distraction from hard times to people we will consider it a win, after all music is a great heeler and the world needs that right now.

For more information on The Shawn Owens Project Trio visit

https://theshawnowensproject.com/


And on Facebook,

https://www.facebook.com/theshawnowensproject

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