Mike Pitre with pocket trumpet
Photo courtesy of  Miss Jo's San Francisco

BOHEMIAN KNUCKLEBOOGIE...Good Music for Hard Times

HEY CATS -
Thanks for buzzing Bohemian Knuckleboogie's cyber stage here in San Francisco, where you can keep in touch with the band's doings and get your regular dose of our swinging Bay Area blues and jazz. The music's roots come from the fever swamps of Port Arthur, Texas - the "Louisiana" part of the Lone Star State. That's where I started honking my horn as a kid, when I wasn't thinking about pirates. Later on as I got more into music, it was a traveling uncle who told me about the blues and jazz clubs of San Francisco's Fillmore District back in the day when cats from all over got down.

Now, the Fillmore's making a come back and it's the band's home base. But our audience is all over town, really the world, and you're a part of it! Thanks too for telling your friends. We also have tunes to share, including Knuckleboogie's latest release The Latrocinor, a happening selection of my original tunes with some of the best San Francisco sidemen playing in the pocket. You know, it's all the blues. Keep on Keeping on, Mike

P.S. Check out my ebook with some more pirate stories, "Epic Life Poem Lived by theFlicker of the Flame."

THE KNUCKLEBOOGIE STORY...

SAN FRANCISCO - Mike Pitre gives Bohemian Knuckleboogie its mojo, with his swinging swamp-blues beat that heats up clubs and dance floors in the Bay Area and beyond.

"Times come and go but the blues is the blues and we we still got that itch," Pitre says. Pitre's calling card is his pocket trumpet, which sends audiences over the top as he bends notes, bops, swings and sambas through a tune. There's no problem getting down, with Pitre moving between his horn, guitar, harmonica, soulful lyrics, scatting and rapping. As Pitre, or Coffee Picasso, says, "We be buzzing in your ears."

Pitre's been working on Bohemian Knuckleboogie over the last several years and says his music has found its groove. He started song writing in the early 1990s while working in New York as a sideman playing straight-ahead jazz at places like the famed Blue Note, Visione's and Arthur's Tavern. While trying to stay afloat in the uncertain music biz, Pitre tapped into the pop scene playing with disco divas Gloria Gaynor and Rozalla to sold-out audiences around the world. Pitre was also in Rozalla's horn section andthe video cover of the O'Jays "I love Music" for Al Pacino's blockbuster movie "Carlito's Way."

Despite demand for his horn playing, Pitre felt like a fake trying to follow jazz greats in their mold. That began to change while living in Brooklyn when he worked with Fugees' producer Jerry Duplessis and met various artists such as Chris Rock who told him to be true to his vision. Pitre decided to point his bow away from New York, first toward Texas, then San Francisco where Bohemian Knuckleboogie plays regularly at venues like Les Joulins Jazz Bistro, Boom Boom Room, Rasselas Jazz Club, Sheba Piano Lounge, OZ Lounge and the famed San Francisco area Off The Grid outdoor food events. Again a popular sideman, outside of Knuckleboogie Pitre plays his trumpet in SF-based bands like the Afrofunk Experience and Boomshanka.

Pitre also has worked in the Bay Area with famed SF blues guitarist Joe Louis Walker, who nicknamed Pitre "Picasso." More importantly, Joe exposed Pitre to the local blues scene. "San Francisco has showed me a lot of love," Pitre says.