One day about 30 years ago, writer/musican/performer Richard Knight popped a cassette into his car’s tape deck and his life turned a corner.
That cassette was a greatest hits compilation by Sérgio Mendes and Brasil ‘66. Knight, who is a longtime Windy City Times contributor, knew that he wanted to make Mendes’s style of music.
“I was kind of looking for a new band project,” Knight recalled, adding with a laugh, “I’m the kind of guy who loves a lot of projects.”
Samba Bamba, a band performing in loving homage to Mendes (with some stylings inspired by the B-52’s thrown in, Knight added) was born. The group rode the ‘90s lounge music revival zeitgeist with gigs all over, playing at numerous Chicago venues. At one point they even had a gig playing between segments of the infamous Jenny Jones Show.
“We were very provocative,” Knight recalled. “People loved it because it was just so fun and dance-able. We’d do stuff like take a song like ‘Copacabana’ and have our own words and our own own little arrangement to it.”
But their gigs became less frequent as Knight and the rest of Samba Bamba became busy with other commitments.
“We had a very long run,” Knight said. “Then of course, what happens? People get busy with their lives, other things and other music projects.”
The group played some holiday shows in the ensuing decades, but hasn’t performed together for seven years. But to mark their 30th anniversary, Samba Bamba is together again—“pouring music through the samba blender,” Knight said—for a show at Martyrs’, 3855 N. Lincoln Ave., on Dec. 18.
Knight plays suave and flirtatious master of ceremonies Monty “Sugarloaf” Mattachine, while vocalist Jen Zias performs as lead singer Lupe Lowenstein. Activist Victor Salvo, who is founder and executive director of Legacy Project Chicago, is backup vocalist Lindo McCartney, who’s also personal valet to Monty and Lupe.
“He’s just supposed to stand there and look really cute—and hold my cocktails, work on my mustache and dance with the ladies and the men,” Knight said of Lindo.
The trio will be joined by musicians Gerald Dowd (drums), Karl Montzka (keyboards), Steve Dollinger (guitar), Randy Henry (bass) and Sam Rodriguez (congas and percussion). Knight said they’ll need to stay on their toes through the entire show.
“They’re killer players,” he said. “…The trick with this kind of music is you need to be [ready if] I see somebody in the audience and I want to go out and start a conga line, or I want to go dance with this person, or if Jen wants to extend something or riff a little bit.”
Knight promises that Monty will be up to his old tricks—flirting with various audience members between songs. Some female audience members back in the day were so taken with Monty they’d seek reassurance that Monty wasn’t gay. Knight said Monty would answer, “Baby, I’m whatever you want me to be—I’m ready to go.”
He added, “That’s one of the things that I loved being able to say: Love is love. That was always our message, which is wild. I wish I could say we coined that phrase, but we did not.”
Vocalist Grace Carlin—Knight’s niece—opens for Samba Bamba at the Dec. 18 show. Knight also said that the band will have a newly-available CD, Sambasized, for sale for the first time at the gig. Samba Bamba is also moving even further into the 21st century with online music sales.
“This is this is the first time anything that we’ve done is being made available digitally,” Knight explained. “It’s all just been on physical media and now people are like, ‘What is that? What is a CD, and what am I supposed to insert that into?’”
Doors open for the Samba Bamba show at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 18 at Martyrs’, 3855 N. Lincoln Ave. For tickets and information, go to martyrslive.com.