Get your Sunday night groove on at the Rams Head when WPG Trio celebrates the release of "Small-Medium-Large" (Severn Records)! Show time is 7 PM.  For ticket information contact the Rams Head at (301) 261-1118 or (410) 268-4545.

 

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The Washington Post

Friday, April 26, 2002; Page WE07

 

WPG TRIO
"Small Medium Large" Severn

Baltimore bass guitarist Gary Grainger is a man with career options. When he isn't busy collaborating with keyboardist Benjie Porecki and drummer Blues Webb in the R&B/jazz trio WPG, he can be found playing funk and smooth-to-fusion jazz with his sibling, drummer Greg in Grainger.

 

Of course, the division of labor isn't always neatly defined. WPG's recent release "Small Medium Large" has plenty of funk going for it too, beginning with Porecki's opening ode "You Are So Fine" and the trio's keyboard-driven reprise of Paul Simon's "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover." By the time the group gets around to covering Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" and saluting Sly Stone via "Thank You (Fallettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," all the quirky bass and keyboard stops have been pulled out and a mood pitched somewhere between free-spirited and cartoonish prevails. In sharp contrast, the trio's cover of "Misty," which projects an old-fashioned, organ-powered soulfulness, and the acoustic arrangement of "Everything Must Change," with its gospel touches, nicely round out the disc.

 

-- Mike Joyce