Flea Circus with Mr. B (Mark Braun), Pete Siers and Dave Bennett

Buy the Flea Circus Duo Album!

About Mr. B (Mark Braun)

Blues and boogie-woogie pianist Mark Lincoln Braun has become one of the premiere purveyors of a vanishing art. Having learned his craft first-hand from the early masters, he is a rare living link to the first generation of blues and boogie pianists. Steeped in the rich legacy of this tremendously exciting music, Mr. B learned directly from blues and boogie legends like Little Brother Montgomery, Boogie Woogie Red, and Blind John Davis.

About Pete Siers

Pete Siers is a hard-swinging, straight-ahead jazz drummer, percussionist, bandleader, and first right-of-call sideman. After spending years with Detroit pianist Eddie Russ, Siers established himself in his adopted hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and since then has played with an ever-multiplying international cast of musicians in an impressive range of styles. These include Mulgrew Miller, Lee Konitz, Benny Golson, Kenny Werner, and Scott Hamilton; he also records with his own trio and quartet. Siers founded the Latin jazz quintet Los Gatos in 1997.

About Dave Bennett

Dave Bennett doesn’t fit the mold.

For starters, you don’t find many jazz clarinet players who name Alice Cooper, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Chris Isaak among their influences. You won’t find many musicians who are equally conversant with the music of Benny Goodman (the “King of Swing”) and Roy Orbison (“The Soul of Rock and Roll”). In fact, you may not find even one other clarinet virtuoso who breaks from his Swing Era repertoire to sing rockabilly hits while accompanying himself at the piano or electric guitar.

In the early days of jazz, the clarinet joined with trumpet and trombone to create the music’s signature sound, and it ruled the roost in the Swing Era when jazz was America’s popular music and dance-party soundtrack. If anyone can return the clarinet to its heyday, it’s Dave Bennett, who fuses serious jazz improvisation with a host of modern pop influences.