Sexmob: Throwing Down, Then and Now

A great new album by Steven Bernstein's merry band sends me back to the beginning

Sexmob at Kenny’s Castaways, Brooklyn, 2009. (Photo: Greg Aiello)

The precise date of my first encounter with Sexmob has been lost in a haze of recollection, but it was probably sometime in the spring of 1997, not long after the band formed, and shortly before I moved to New York. What I do recall is the jostling vibe of the Knitting Factory Tap Bar, where the band found its purpose in a weekly residency, caterwauling over the clamor of a partying crowd. The room was sardine-packed: a long, narrow fire hazard with the band set up at the far end, backed against a blood-red curtain. They sounded bonkers, in a way that made perfect sense. 

For those who haven’t had the pleasure, Sexmob is a four-piece band made up of Steven Bernstein on slide trumpet (and bandleading, browbeating, tunesmithery); Briggan Krauss on alto and baritone saxophones; Tony Scherr on bass; and Kenny Wollesen on drums. The band has a terrific new studio album, The Hard Way, that splits the difference between hunkering down and stretching out.

I reviewed this album for WRTI, so that’s where you should look for my full critical appraisal. But in the process of writing the review, I had some cause for reflection. The Hard Way is named after producer and engineer Scotty Hard, who has shaped the sound of most Sexmob releases, going back to their 1998 debut, and plays an even more integral role here. The longevity of that relationship got me thinking in terms of a continuum: what’s changed in the 27 years since Sexmob first started throwing down at the Tap Bar? What hasn’t?

One constant is the familial cohesion among the band members and a concentric circle of partners, collaborators and friends. Along with Hard and organist John Medeski (who makes an excellent cameo on the album), I’d include someone like photographer and health coach Greg Aiello, who’s been shooting the band in every conceivable setting for well over a decade. Greg — a friend of The Gig since back when it was a print product — took the Kenny’s Castaways photo at the top of this newsletter. He also shot the band’s current promo pic. “That stoop shoot at Tony’s apartment was an epic hang,” he says via email. “The guys hadn’t been together in almost two years which is the longest they’d been apart since forming. They love each other so much and I’m always in awe when I’m the fifth one hanging with them.”

I recognize the joy and relief that Greg’s describing, because I felt it in the company of Sexmob too — with Medeski, on the outdoor deck at The Falcon on Aug. 20, 2020. This was my first pandemic experience with live music in real physical proximity; as I emailed a friend at the time, I hadn’t seen a gig since March 4 of that year. Before the show, I ran into Bernstein, who was giddy with excitement about playing for a crowd. The feeling was shared by everyone who’d shown up, breaking out of their cocoons.

As I said at the top, my own history with Sexmob goes back almost to the origins of the band. I’ve covered them live, reviewed their albums (including Cultural Capital, the one before this one, released in 2017). I’ve caught dozens of their shows. And 20 years ago I profiled the band, which was then stylized as Sex Mob, for JazzTimes.

This was around the release of their album Dime Grind Palace, featuring trombonist and Bernstein idol Roswell Rudd. As part of my reporting, I attended their recording session at Loho Studios, which had the energy of a house party. During a brief lull, I checked in with Rudd, and here’s how he characterized the session:

You get this tremendously extroverted thing, at the same time that you have this very mindful thing going on. And when you put that together, you have a human being, basically. So that music is like an organism. It has life: it gets up, walks around the room, gets into everybody else’s body. When you walk out the door into the street, there it is. It’s like another person, greater than the combination of all of us. So we’re in that stream. We’re all connected here.

Rudd, who died in 2017, knew what he was talking about (in most things, and certainly in this). There’s a lot more in the piece, which I’m reprinting below for subscribers. Rereading it 20 years later feels not unlike revisiting that music: So much has changed, and so much remains the same.