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the joint chiefs

"....tight harmonies...loose attitude..." Michael Eck, WAMC Albany, NY

What makes a band sound unique..? A compelling and charismatic vocalist, for one, and so it follows that what makes the Joint Chiefs especially unique is that they have three. On both “it matches your juice”, their debut CD and the recently released “Half Fast”, the Chief's place this vocal firepower front and center and get out of the way. The results are both pleasing and promising, most notably because they keep the song squarely in the cross hairs.

By the time they joined forces in 1995, Eliot Osborn, Louise Lindenmeyr, and George Potts were already in command of their distinctly different musical personas: Mr. Osborn, a grumbling singer/songwriter of the John Hiatt kind, Ms. Lindenmeyr , a backwoods Ricky Lee / Norah Jones, and Mr. Potts, a powerfully clear tenor with a Lyle Lovett-like affection for fat free arrangements. Without really thinking about being a band, the three began to sing and play as one in a living room, wrapping themselves around " songs that were so well written they could transcend the style in which they were originally conceived." Intrigued by what they heard, they billed themselves as the Joint Chiefs " because it created such a humorous uplink while placing us on equal footing " and headed out into the local watering holes. Over the next few years, the Chiefs expanded their domain, becoming somewhat of a regional phenomenon while marshaling an audience drawn to what Lindenmeyr terms " our tight harmonies and loose attitude ".

The release of "it matches your juice" in the spring of 2000 resulted in radio airplay on several alternative stations around New England and better gigs, most notably, inclusion in New Haven's internationally recognized Arts and Ideas Festival and Winterhawk Bluegrass and Beyond 2000.

With their long overdue follow up “Half Fast”, The Chiefs have taken aim at becoming increasingly more visible in listening rooms, festivals, and concert halls around New England, and the band is set to tour Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Russia in the summer of '06.
Ten years after their inception, The Joint Chiefs sound less like a song swap and more like a band with an ever shifting focal point. In concert, as well as on their recording, the music infuses an acoustic dynamic with a delivery that rocks. Over a smoldering instrumentation woven primarily with guitar, mandolin, bass and Osborn's footbox ( a plywood enclosure with a microphone inside that he plays with his feet ), the Chiefs unleash an acrobatic vocal awareness that soars above it. While in flight, the Chiefs take turn driving... swooping and diving across a songscape that dovetails their own writing with " chestnuts " from a diverse group of more well known artists that includes Louis Jordan, Joni Mitchell, and Bruce Springsteen - to name a few.

" We're excited about our own writing ", Potts explains, " but more than performing for an audience, we want to to connect with them... and that requires stepping outside the gospel according to us now and then and referencing something more familiar to everyone in the room. Just don't be surprised ", he adds with a mischievous grin, " when your favorite R & B standard suddenly sounds like an Appalachian waltz. "

“it matches your juice” and “Half Fast” are available at cdbaby.com, selections from them are available at a variety of online digital music stores ( iTunes, etc... ), and the band's URL is http://www.jointchiefsmusic.com