Please note that Fat Kid Wednesdays had to cancel.
Filling in for the night is the Dave King Trucking Company Trio featuring Dave King, Brandon Wozniak & Erik Fratzke!
All tickets to Fat Kid Wednesdays will transfer to the Trucking Company show.
If you prefer a refund, please email info@icehousempls.com or call 612-276-6523 opt 1.
$25 ADVANCE / $30 DAY OF SHOW
OPTIONAL $75 DINNER & SHOW (both sets) PACKAGE
OUR SPECIAL NYE FOOD MENU HERE
COMPLIMENTARY CHAMPAGNE & WHISKEY TOAST AT MIDNIGHT
Chris Bates Trio featuring Joe Strachan & Miguel Hurtado Trio 6-8:30pm
Dave King Trucking Company Trio 9:30-12:30am
IF YOU PURCHASE THE DINNER & SHOW PACKAGE, YOU KEEP YOUR TABLE FOR THE ENTIRE EVE.
*GRATUITY NOT INCLUDED IN DINNER & SHOW PACKAGE PRICE.
Peel any page from Dave King’s touring calendar and you’ll likely see gigs with The Bad Plus, Happy Apple, the Dave King Trio, and Halloween, Alaska. Or the Dave King Trucking Company. The DKTC was launched in 2010 during a two-night King extravaganza at the Walker Art Center. Seven years and many accolades later, this Minnesota-New York hybrid ensemble celebrated its third recording, Surrounded by the Night, at Vieux Carré in St. Paul last summer. Now adding to the Icehouse anniversary festivities, King will be joined by Twin Cities cohorts Brandon Wozniak and Erik Fratzke.
Drummer Dave King might be best known for his long-standing work with The Bad Plus and Happy Apple, but his affiliations hardly end there. In fact, at any given moment, King is likely involved in at least ten projects ranging from the jazz oriented Bad Plus, Happy Apple, Chris Speed Trio, Craig Taborn’s Junk Magic, and Buffalo Collision to rock bands like Halloween, Alaska and impossible-to-define electronic outfits like Gang Font, as well as his piano trio with Billy Peterson and Bill Carrothers. King grew up in the Twin Cities, starting off on piano at age four before switching to drums in fifth grade. As a teen he forged his early music connections with fellow Golden Valley residents Reid Anderson and Craig Taborn, whose paths would intersect again and again (including in the aptly named band, Golden Valley Is Now). He attended Cooper High School and the MacPhail Center for Music, studying jazz and rock.
At 19, King headed west, working as a session musician in LA in the early 90s before returning to the Twin Cities to find his own voice. “I always wanted to be in the mix,” he told the Pioneer Press some years ago, “to help design and define the sound of the ensemble rather than just be the guy who plays drums.” Soon he helped design and define the sound of Happy Apple, the trio that came together in 1996, ultimately completed with saxophonist Michael Lewis and electric bassist Erik Fratzke and straddling avant garde jazz and alternative rock. In addition to his discography with The Bad Plus and Happy Apple, and his appearances on a long list of other recordings, King released a solo album combining his skills as drummer, pianist and composer, Indelicate (2010, Sunnyside); in fall 2012, his then-new Dave King Trio with Bill Carrothers and Billy Peterson released the well-received I’ve Been Ringing You (Sunnyside).
Whatever the band of the moment or decade, King remains the Energizer Bunny of drummers, both in terms of his frenetic musical wizardry and his simultaneous association with numerous and diverse bands. Traditional approaches to percussion have never appealed to King, whose technique is described by Matt Peiken (St. Paul Pioneer Press) as relying “on incredible finger control to nuance his fills, which often defy the neat subdivisions of typical beats.” Similarly idiosyncratic is King’s collection of “instruments” that includes walkie talkies and children’s toys. “What’s considered banal pop drumming is never going to be my thing,” King says. “But my thing will not work with everyone. I need to have people who trust where I’m coming from, people with me who will think ‘King’s on the gig — something’s probably going to happen.’ ”
Saxaphonist Brandon Wozniak previously lived and worked in New York City, toured with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, and earned his BA from Indiana University under the tutelage of the late David Baker. Since returning home to the Twin Cities in 2006, he has performed with a long list of local bands, and currently plays with the Atlantis Quartet, Zacc Harris Group, Chris Bates Red 5, Bryan Nichols Quintet, the Adam Meckler Quintet, Mancrush, and the Atrium Jazz Ensemble.
Bassist/Multi-instrumentalist/composer Erik Fratzke lends his bass to Happy Apple and his guitar to other projects, including Gang Font and Zebulon Pike. The Winona native started off on drums, switching to upright bass in fourth grade. Among early influences he cites his mother’s record collection (including Bartok), MTV, classical string quartets, and later, the bass playing of Stanley Clarke, Jeff Berlin and Jaco Pastorious. Early in his career, he found himself playing jazz, metal, even “Christian country rock.” Over the years, the three-time Minnesota Music Awards winner as “Bassist of the Year” has played with Reid Anderson and Bill Carrothers in addition to Mike Lewis and Dave King.