Roister is coming to Bell’s Brewery

Roister 

The group Roister is coming to Bell’s Brewery on May 22, 2014   . It’s an original band created like a super group. The core group features Markus Messina, Ray White, and Jesse Clayton.

Members of Roister have played with Frank Zappa, Jerry Garcia Band, The Macpodz, The Grateful Dead, Melvin Seals and JGB …

Markus Messina is the founder of the group. He says the name "Roister" means boisterous merry making. “I saw it somewhere and I thought, what a great name for a band. “Making people dance,” he explains with a dash of para-improvisation. “It kind of fit.”

"We're kind of trying to create a celebration of life," says Messina. "And in that you have a lot of funk mixed with some fusion and we've added a couple Frank Zappa tunes because a lot of the guys have played with him."

Thinking about Zappa’s music was notoriously challenging for studio musicians to record from sheet music solid black with the rock maestro’s notations, covering Zappa constantly presents a challenge.

“Like TomFowler  said, there’s easy Zappa and there’s real Zappa,” Messina says.

“I don’t know,” he adds with a chuckle, when asked to explain the difference.

“It’s a groove-oriented band. What Ray brings to the table is a way of improvising. We could be in the middle of a jam and suddenly we’re playing a Zappa song.”

That improvisation lends itself to a unique evening of music resembling The Grateful Dead in one way: never duplicating the same set list two nights in a row.

“We’re trying to provide a one-time experience,” Messina says. “If you’re here that night, you might hear something that we won’t play the next night,As a young musician, what I've always respected and liked about Frank Zappa was the approach to a live show and not having it be set in stone,"

 The band members try to make enjoying music with each other and performing fun. The group has a lot of capable musicians to let one single individual overshadow anyone else.

"It's really all about listening to each other and creating these moments for everyone else to shine," Messina says.

The band has big plans for this forthcoming show at Bell's Brewery. The band will debut a storytelling tune from Roister's Ray White called "Spring Water." They'll also play a number of other new songs and you might even notice a Beatles medley inside.

The band will move to Chicago to record their initial album shortly after their performance at Bell's.