Dotsero: Inspiration Springs From Colorado : Jazz: That’s not the only thing the band got from its home state. Its name and sound are rooted there, too. The group plays Randell’s tonight.
The three guys at the core of Dotsero--saxophonist Stephen Watts, his brother, guitarist David Watts and bassist Michael Friedman--have been playing together since their junior-high-school days. But it took them several years, and no small amount of difficulty, to come up with a name that finally stuck.
“We started out as the Neighborhood,” Stephen Watts said by phone earlier this week from his home outside Denver, “but didn’t feel that was quite right, so we changed it to Sneakers. “Then we got a cease-and-desist letter from some band in California called Sneakers, so we thought about it and became New Shoes. Then we heard from a band in Portland called New Shoes, and that was that. We were starting to get a complex.”
The three finally settled on Dotsero, the name of a tiny Rocky Mountain town where the Watts brothers went to fish.
“It was just a little place with a cinder-block factory and a trailer park,” the saxophonist said, “and we were afraid that it wasn’t memorable enough. But when we took the name we didn’t realize how much history and folklore was associated with it.”
The tag has worked out perfectly since it was adopted some eight years ago, though, Watts said, someone once came forward to tell them that there was an English band with the same moniker. “Probably just a bad joke,” he said with a laugh.
They’ve heard various stories about the origin of the word. One tale has it that the town earned its name from being “dot zero” on a geological survey map. Another says that it’s a Ute Indian word that roughly means “something unique” and was applied to the area because of its unusual thermal activity.
Whatever the origins of its name, Dotsero has carved out something unique of its own--a sound that combines accessible rhythms, hummable melodies and cut-loose improvisations that fit the New Adult Contemporary label perfectly. Their 1991 album, “Jubilee,” spent time as No. 1 on both Gavin and R&R; radio play charts.
Now the band is back with “Out of Hand,” a clean, mountain-high collection that looks to its Colorado homeland for inspiration. The group, which also includes keyboardist Tom Capek and drummer Larry Thompson, appears tonight at Randell’s in Santa Ana.
“Our music is very melody oriented,” Watts said. “Usually in the realm of straight-ahead jazz, the melody was just an excuse to get to the improvisation. But we’ve tried to make the melody and the chords as important as the improvisation.
“The three of us all grew up in an era of rock and jazz, so it’s only natural to combine the things we’ve been influenced by. We’ve listened to everyone from Boston (to) Heart and Kansas. I remember going to see all four of Joni Mitchell’s concerts one summer when she had (bassist) Jaco Pastorius, (guitarist) Pat Metheny and (saxophonist) Michael Brecker in her band. It was like going to a clinic.”
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Watts says the band is definitely influenced by its home state. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” he said. “There’s just something about it. One of the songs (from the new album), ‘The View,’ is inspired by Trail Ridge Road that cuts across Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s a very special place where we go to relax and to get inspired.”
But not all the stories behind the band’s compositions are as spectacular. “I’m often inspired by my family, especially my son,” said Watts, whose tune “Pickin’ a Pumpkin” comes from a Halloween experience with his 6-year-old.
“Anybody who has kids can relate to the fact that a little boy growing up is one of the most humorous things there is. We live in a duplex next door to my wife’s sister, who also has a son. So we’re living a situation comedy around here. There’s always some kind of funny adventure or crisis going on that involves those two.”
David Watts contributed “The Choir Invisible,” a title taken from a poem by Victorian novelist George Eliot. The guitarist went to great lengths to record the church-bell sounds that open and close the number.
“The bells are from the Augustana Lutheran Church in Denver,” Stephen Watts said. “He wanted that exact sound so badly, he’d go out with microphones taped to boards tied to a rope which he tried to throw up over them to pulley the microphones up. He must have failed four or five times.
“We kept telling him there are plenty of sampled bells we could use,” Watts said. “But he said, ‘That’s not the point; I want something real there.’ Well, he finally got it to work, and the sound was perfect.”
For an eclectic touch, the band also covers Fine Young Cannibals’ “She Drives Me Crazy.”
“Some radio (stations) have considered it too harsh for (New Adult Contemporary) play, and that’s a little disappointing,” he said. “But it’s good if we can stir things up a little. When we first got it down, we played it at one of the Aspen dance clubs, and everybody really grooved to it.”
That’s the most important part of a Dotsero show, according to Watts: the audience.
“Not to knock the old-time jazzers,” he said, “but they sometimes become so into their music that they put up an imaginary barrier between the audience and the music.
“We do the opposite,” he said. “We try to draw the audience in with fun, have a performance that is visually enjoyable. From a personality standpoint, we want people to think, ‘Shoot, these are the kind of guys we’d like to have a beer with.’ ”
* Dotsero plays tonight at Randell’s, 3 Hutton Centre Drive, Santa Ana. 8, 9:30 and 11 p.m. Table minimum varies. (714) 556-7700.
