The Story

We'e often been asked about "the Entrain story."  I decided it was time to sit down, dust the cobwebs off my memory, and recall—to the best of my ability—how it all began, as well as some interesting inside notes on the various line-ups and some additional liner notes on the recording of each CD.

For those of you that have been with us a while, you know we’ve had quite a few changes through the years.  We’ve had the good fortune of making music with many talented people.  Each one of them has brought something to the band that enriched the experience for us all.  Entrain is constantly evolving, which to me has been one of the reasons why it has kept its vitality.  The constant infusion of “new blood” keeps the excitement level high as the band effortlessly adjusts through each change.  As we enjoy our 13th year, the music sounds better than ever to me.  I am personally enjoying the music we making now more than ever.  As I recall the past, I look forward to the future.  Warning: The following is for “Serious Entrain Fans Only”—past, present, and future. Enjoy.

Peace,
Tom Major

Birth of a Band

In the winter of 1992–93, I was living in New York City and touring with rock-n-roll legend Bo Diddley.  I’ve always had a love for world rhythms and groove-heavy music.  While playing with Bo, who is the master of groove, I was convinced of the power of rhythmic music.  Every time I would play the “Bo Diddley Beat” on the tom-toms, people would instantly be on their feet and dancing.  I was inspired to form my own band that was dedicated to exploring the power of different rhythms, as well as writing songs that would inspire and create a positive, infectious vibe.  That same winter I had taken a three-week trip to Gambia to soak up the rich culture and music of West Africa, furthering my conviction to form a drum/rhythm-heavy band.  I was planning on spending the next summer on Martha’s Vineyard as I had been for a few years, playing music and escaping the NYC heat.  I thought the Vineyard was the perfect place to “test the water” as reggae/Caribbean/world music was very popular there and the people were very open.  My task now was to find musicians who either lived on the Vineyard or, like me, were commuting there for summer work.

Original Lineup

The first two members I recruited were percussionists: Sam Holmstock and Rick Bausman.  They both had been part of a popular Vineyard-based “world beat” band called the Ululators.  Sam and Rick were also founders of the Vineyard’s only drum ensemble, Die Kunst der Drum.  With the drummers in place, we needed guitar and bass.  I had been playing some “pick up” gigs on the Vineyard with two very talented singer/songwriters, both of whom (like me) were New York City residents.  Bass player Judd Fuller, who had grown up summering on the Vineyard, and Hawaiian native Johnny Cruz, who was playing mostly solo acoustic gigs at the time.  Johnny and I had been commuting together between the Vineyard and NYC and had become good friends.  They both were intrigued by the concept, although a little “frightened” by all the drums. They signed on for the summer.  To complete the line-up, Judd brought along saxophonist Rob Loyot, who he had been playing with the recently-defunct band Live Bait, led by Mike Benjamin.  Rob’s high harmonies and solid percussion playing made him the perfect addition.  Along with enough drums to sink a battleship, we had all the elements of a great band.

Putting it All Together

The band rehearsed sporadically through the winter of 1992-93, writing songs at every rehearsal.  The creative sparks were flying.  I would start with a groove, John would have a chorus, Judd would have a verse, Sam and Rob were off writing the horn lines.  We instantly knew we had good writing chemistry.  We wrote a lot of songs that winter, the best of the bunch eventually ended up being our first CD.  We were all set for our first gig on January 6th, 1993 at the Atlantic Connection in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, except for one small detail: we didn’t have a name.

The Name

I first came across the word “entrain” while reading the book Drumming at the Edge of Magic, by Mickey Hart.  Entrainment was the word he used to describe the event that takes place when a group of drummers/musicians are all “locked” into a groove.  I searched further and was fascinated by this concept.  It seemed to me to be the perfect name for our new band, as the music was based on world rhythms.

The Law of Entrainment

In 1665, Dutch Scientist Christian Huygens described something which is now called the law of entrainment.  This law holds that if two or more rhythms are in close proximity, they will always fall into synchrony (or, as we say using slang, get in synch).  Huygens observed that pendulum wall clocks, when placed next to each other, would become “entrained” and beat in sync with each other.  This law holds true for all types of rhythms: biological, celestial, mechanical, musical, etc.

The Logo

The first logo we used was a take-off on the New York City Subway N Train.  I was living in Manhattan and taking this subway line often.  Although the name of our band had nothing to do with trains, it seemed like a good idea.  This was used for a short time and was our first T-shirt design.  We then moved to what is now the current letter typeface, but without the design that most people refer to as “the rising sun.”  On our first trip to Colorado in March of 1994, at a truck stop on the way out, I bought a postcard full of Native American symbols and their meanings.  The one that caught my eye was called the “Rattle Snake Jaw", and was the symbol for strength.  I made a rough copy of this with a sharpie and placed it over our name.  I then taped it to the dashboard of our funky “Big Blue” van, so we could see how it looked.  We looked at that logo for the entire two-week trip out West and back.  By the time we returned home, it was etched into our consciousness.  Our logo was born.  I often think the strength represented in the symbol is the perfect symbol for Entrain and that, by accident, I had found a great logo for us.

The Atlantic Connection

We played our first gig January 6th, 1993 on Martha’s Vineyard at the Atlantic Connection in Oak Bluffs, MA.  Everybody came down.  Having a band full of local “Island favorites,” we had little trouble packing in a good crowd.  We came back in April and there were even more people.  The crowd was dancing hard and just having a ball.  So were we!  We easily talked the club manager, Mike Santoro, into giving us all his Thursdays for the summer.  By July, the Thursday show was the biggest thing on the Vineyard night scene, with SRO and lines out the door.  As one fan put it, “Entrain....it’s not just a band, it’s an event.”  These people were having such a great time, it was infectious.  By the end of September, we thought we really might be on to something.  The summer on “Fantasy Island” was over and we decided we should take the band in the studio to record.

The First Recording

In October of 1993, we all ventured off to record demos at Wendell Recording Studios in Wendell, MA.  Set in the woods of this beautiful Berkshire mountain town, it was the perfect place for us to record.  We all lived in a band house a short walk through the woods from the studio.  With no distractions, we were able to record 9 songs in 3 days.  Although we had set out to record only demos, this eventually turned out to be our first, self-titled CD.  We had so much fun hanging out and recording.  The sessions were effortless: most of the rhythm tracks were first takes, with the band playing live in the studio.  Only the vocals and some horn parts were overdubbed.  We were not as concerned with having everything perfect as we were with capturing the “vibe” on the recording.  I think we did a good job of that.  Our good friend and archivist at the time, Ian Elerby, came along with his video camera and captured some great moments of us recording and hanging out at the band house, as well as some early live footage that he edited down to a mini-documentary on the band.  This ran on the Vineyard local cable access channel constantly that winter.  (We hope to be making some of this available to our fans someday.)

Johnny Cruz and I took the tapes back to NYC with us to mix four songs with Steve Boyer at the Power Station.  We were very happy with the mixes and decided to print cassette tape demos.

The Real World

Johnny Cruz and I moved back to NYC.  Rob moved to Killington, VT. Judd was between NYC and the Vineyard.  Sam and Rick were already “year-rounders” and didn’t move anywhere.  I had a pretty busy schedule between touring with Bo Diddley, playing every Monday at the Rock ’n Roll Cafe with Four Sticks, a Led-Zeppelin tribute band, as well as leading White Collar Crime, an R&B club band with all my old Southside Johnny band-mates.  This—along with many pick-up gigs, recording projects, and paid “rehearsal bands”—left me little time to do much else.  The thing was, nothing I did gave me as much pleasure as playing with Entrain.  I started putting more energy into booking gigs and rehearsing the band whenever we could get together.  John and I would drive up for weekend pick-up gigs on the Vineyard whenever we could and rehearse during the day.  We had gigs here and there on the Vineyard as well as in Boston and New York that winter, but by no means were we a full-time band.  An interesting thing happened at our few “off island gigs”: we found that wherever we went, there was quite a number of people at the shows that had seen us on the Vineyard that summer and had spread the word.  The buzz was growing.  We had some good nights at places like Harper’s Ferry in Boston, but we were all looking forward to the next summer on the Vineyard.

Rick Bausman Leaves

Rick Bausman, our percussionist, was having trouble with our “off island” schedule.  Although we were not working full-time with Entrain, he quickly realized that this band was heading in a direction that would take him away from home quite a bit.  He was having increasing trouble being on the road and decided he needed to leave the band.  He was starting his own one-man percussion workshop that he brought to schools and summer camps.  He was great at this.  The kids loved him, and he loved doing it.  We all understood his need and wished him well on his journey.  Exit Rick.  Enter Bruce Martin.