The House Band
The Connelly Five
Five musicians. One pocket. The best house band at the last great talk show. Jazz-funk, tight and warm, led by Chester Mack, who has been ready since 1987.
Five musicians. One pocket. The best house band at the last great talk show. Jazz-funk, tight and warm, led by Chester Mack, who has been ready since 1987.
Chester Mack built this band the way you build anything that matters: slowly, deliberately, and with a refusal to compromise on the things that count. He wanted musicians who could play anything, feel everything, and know when not to play at all. He wanted a band that could swing from a New Orleans funeral dirge to a Parliament groove in four bars and make it sound like it was always supposed to go there. He wanted a band that sounded like a conversation between five people who trust each other completely.
The Connelly Five is that band. They are the heartbeat of Late Night with Ward Connelly. They play Ward on stage. They play to commercial. They play guests off with exactly the right energy, whether the guest just told a devastating personal story or a joke about their dog. They score the desk segments. They fill the silences that need filling and respect the silences that don't. And once a week, they get a full performance, and it is always the best four minutes of television that night.
The sound is jazz-funk, but the range is wide. Chester calls it "pocket music." Everything sits in the groove, everything breathes, nothing rushes, nothing drags. The arrangements are tight but alive. The band can read a room, read a moment, and respond to both in real time. This is not a backing band. This is a band.
Chester Mack was born in New Orleans and trained at Berklee, which means he learned music twice: once from the city that invented it and once from the institution that codified it. He will tell you the city taught him more, but he will say it with the precision of a man who paid attention in class. Chester has played with everyone, and when you say "everyone" about most musicians it is an exaggeration, but with Chester it is actually an understatement. He has been a sideman, a session player, a bandleader, and a musical director. He has played rooms that held twenty people and rooms that held twenty thousand. He approaches both the same way: with warmth, with discipline, and with the unshakable belief that the groove is sacred. Chester is the moral center of the show. When things get chaotic, which they do, Chester's left hand keeps the rhythm and his right hand keeps the peace. He has been ready for this since 1987. He will not tell you what happened in 1987. Nobody asks twice.
Ray Odom plays guitar the way good writers use adjectives: sparingly, precisely, and only when they make the sentence better. He is warm where other guitarists are flashy. He is melodic where other guitarists are loud. He never plays a note to prove he can play it. Every note he plays is there because the song asked for it. Ray came up in Nashville, which is a town full of extraordinary guitarists, and the fact that Chester Mack called him specifically tells you everything you need to know. Ray's tone is round and golden. His rhythm work is impeccable. His solos, when they come, are like someone opening a window in a room you didn't realize was stuffy. He makes everyone around him sound better, which is the highest compliment you can pay a musician and the hardest skill to teach.
Petra Vale holds everything together. This is what bass players do, but Petra does it with a steadiness that borders on architectural. She is the foundation. She is the floor. Without her, the house falls down, and with her, you don't even think about the floor because you are too busy admiring the furniture, which is exactly how Petra prefers it. She came from the session world in Los Angeles, where she played on more records than she can count and more records than you have heard. Her sister, Cassidy Vale, programs music at The Wanderer, because the Vale family apparently has a genetic predisposition toward impeccable musical taste. Petra's lines are deep, locked, and deliberate. She and Suki Moss form a rhythm section that Chester describes as "the reason I sleep well at night." She does not need the spotlight. The spotlight needs her.
Suki Moss is precise. This is the first thing anyone says about her, and it is accurate, but it is not the whole picture. She is precise the way a surgeon is precise, the way a watchmaker is precise, but she is also musical the way a singer is musical. Her time is flawless. Her feel is human. She can play a groove so locked that you forget someone is playing it, and then she will drop a fill that reminds you, suddenly and completely, that a human being with extraordinary talent is sitting behind those drums. Suki is the pulse of The Connelly Five. She studied at the New School in New York and played in jazz clubs where the audience listened and funk bands where the audience danced. She can serve both audiences in the same bar. Chester calls her "the clock," which from Chester is the highest praise available. She keeps time. She keeps everyone honest.
Leo Grant is the voice of the band. Not the leader, that is Chester. Not the foundation, that is Petra and Suki. Leo is the voice: the instrument you hear singing above the groove, the melody that carries the emotion, the thing that makes you feel something you weren't expecting to feel during a commercial break on a talk show. Leo plays tenor and alto saxophone with a tone that is warm, clear, and immediately recognizable. He grew up in Detroit and learned to play in church, which means he understands that music is supposed to make people feel things, not just hear things. His solos are stories. His accompaniment is atmosphere. When the band plays a guest off after a particularly moving interview, it is Leo's saxophone that turns a transition into a moment. Chester says Leo is the reason people remember the music. Leo says Chester is too generous. They are both right.