2B3 or not 2B3 – now that was the question! Yes, years ago I was admittedly bitten by the B3 virus. Now what’s a B3 virus you say? Well… it’s when you get off just holding a chord and listening to the leslie speaker speed up and slow down; it’s when you turn on your percussion and play a simple blues riff and it sounds like God; it’s when you do a glissando into the next section of a song and it takes your head off; it’s when you configure the nine drawbars in a way you never did before and then listen to the resultant sound with awe; it’s when you put the pedal to the floor and bring everybody to their knees; it’s when… well I could go on and on but you got the point.. especially you wheel heads out there!

It all happened years ago in Erie, Pa of all places. I actually this incarnation was trying to hide and just kick back and so I chose an all American Hamburg town off the cross roads of the world town like Erie (they some times call it dreary Erie). The plan was working out just fine until at three years old and I saw Dick Contino, a famous accordionist at the time(yikes am I old or what?), perform on TV. I immediately came to life and kept pointing to the TV trying to get my parent’s attention. I did but they thought that I meant that I wanted to play the squeeze box as after all, I was born into an Italian-Catholic family and of course Sunday mass, spaghetti and meat balls and the accordion came with the territory. Now lucky for me my teacher, Basil Ronzitti, was a happening dude as he wasn’t your typical squeeze box instructor. He was into all kinds of serious music and organized an accordion chamber group in which I played first chair – yes, you heard it correctly, an accordion chamber group. We played transcriptions from Baroque to 20th century – Bach to Schoenberg – and oh… okay…. I did play an occasional polka and did the bellows shake on Lady of Spain I must confess!

But one day I heard a bare-murmur-to-primal-wail absolutely righteous sound. What the hell was this? It was a Hammond B3 organ and little did I know that I caught the “organic” virus and have been infected ever since! To those who haven’t been infected either as a player or a listener, I invite you to research just a fraction of the artists and groups that have used this unique instrument – the Hammond/Leslie combination.

Some of my influences which were in no particular order are Keith Emerson from ELP, Rick Wakeman from Yes, Felix Caviler from The Young Rascals, Chester Thompson from Tower of Power, Jimmy Smith, Grove Holmes, Bryan Auger, James Brown, Booker T Jones, Matthew Fisher from Procol Harum, Peter Robinson from Quatermass, Stevie Winwood from Traffic, Jack MacDuff, Larry Young, Mark Stein from the Vanilla Fudge, Edgar Winter, Jon Lord from Deep Purple, Lee Michaels, Billy Preston, Greg Allman, Al Cooper, Jan Hammer, Greg Rolie, Richard Tee and Gary Peterson and unknown monster who I saw playing in the strip clubs of Boston. And these are just a few of my favorites as there are for sure more groups like Led Zepplin, Humble Pie, Spooky Tooth, Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Steppenwolfe…. Yikes it never ends! But what happen? It seems during the time period around the invention of the synthesizer, Fender Rhodes etc the Hammond Organ became missing in action from popular recordings. Recently it seems the monster is coming back due to such diverse artists as Joey Defrancesco, Larry Goldings, Barbara Dennerlein, John Madeski and many more. I never sold my B3 nor stopped playing it frankly during these scarce years. On the contrary, I modified it by having Bill Beer of Keyboard Products(Rest his soul) convert it to a solid state high powered custom portable; Paul Homb from Keyboard Specialties added velocity sensitive MIDI to both manuals; I beefed up the percussion and added some effects and with a little serendipity and synchronicity, I ran into Billy Sheehan and Dennis Chambers and lo and behold - Niacin was born! Niacin is a high energy rock fusion super trio guaranteed to wake up a sleepy planet of easy listeners and upset blues and jazz purists and make audiences who love that good old screaming music from the late 60’s and 70’s feel oh so good.

For all you health conscious dudes, Niacin of course is one of the B vitamins, specifically vitamin B3 and so since the music we wanted to play revolved around this sound, we named the project Niacin. And so yet another B3 group was born and the B3 continues to make it’s come back – thar she blows! So from the innocent accordion beginnings, playing the cover songs from all the groups and artists mentioned earlier, playing jazz standards in strip clubs in Boston while attending Berklee College of Music and now fusing all of that time track and history into Niacin and beyond, it has been one hell of a fun ride! Enjoy the site and please… do sign up for my mailing list to receive my free E newsletter and updates.

Later... John