Mark Joseph and Heatbox at The Fitzgerald Theater (11-18-2023)

11/18 Mark Joseph and Heatbox with Melvin Seals of Jerry Garcia Band at The Fitzgerald Theater Read More Heatbox It’s a dual album release show for Mark Joseph’s Palisade Peach and Heatbox’s Hilarious & Epically Legendary at the Fitzgerald Theater in St Paul on November 18th. … Mark Joseph We randomly saw Joseph in Aug 2015 and mentioned, “We grab some crab cakes at the Café Caribe and followed the music... which led to Mark Joseph Project. He played some Caribbean-inspired songs with reggae jams …

It was double the fun at The Fitzgerald Theater Saturday night with a dual album release party with local musicians Mark Joseph and Heatbox bringing the funk, blues, R&B and plenty of soul.

Joseph was so excited to get the party started that he almost forgot to plug in his guitar. “Everyone ready,” he asked the gathering musicians on stage. “All 29 of us.” It wasn't quite that many, but a lot of friends joined him to celebrate the release of his fourth album Palisade Peach.

Mark Joseph (27 Aug 2015)

In an interview Joseph told American Highways that when he saw BB King at ten years-old his path was set. He would adopt the role of the rambling blues musician, playing 200+ shows a year, playing anywhere, playing as a full-time guitarist for The Big Wu, forming Momentary Lapse of Floyd to play Pink Floyd’s The Wall with The Twin Cities Ballet. We even caught him in 2015 at the Minnesota State Fair playing at Cafe Caribe.

“Not quite a Prairie Home Companion,” Joseph laughed after finishing a couple of rousing interpretations of Robert Johnson’s “Come on in My Kitchen” and “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” with Stanley Beres providing solos on harmonica and tenor sax.

It wasn’t Delta blues with one musician wailing on an acoustic guitar. It was Chicago style with loud electric guitars and plenty of collaboration with The North Side Horns providing the pomp, Steph Devine and Jill Mikelson providing the sultry backup vocals, Toby Marshall on the Hammond and Steve McCormick, the right-hand-man on Joseph’s left providing the slide guitar.

A highlight of the evening was the title song of Palisade Peach where Joseph and McCormick launched into a dynamite guitar duo that had the hair on the back of my neck shaking.

As an added bonus Melvin Seals from the Jerry Garcia Band joined the group to provide some extra sauce on the Hammond for songs like “Deep Ellum Blues” and Wilson Pickett’s “Wait Until the Midnight Hour.”

After a fifteen minute intermission Heatbox aka Aaron Heaton took the stage.

Heaton is from Northeast Minneapolis. He started out as a beatboxer, loop artist and voice actor, but four years before he sat in a St. Paul coffee shop with his long time friend, Joseph, and expressed a vision of them both not only releasing albums but having an epic release party. And there he was singing songs from his Hilarious & Epically Legendary, a perfect title for an artist whose lyrics are in the vein of “Weird Al” Yankovic with the soul of an R&B artist.

Heaton’s goal for the debut album: To straddle the line between awesome and totally stupid. And did he succeed. After all, who else is going to do a slow-jam about how to properly drive on the highway in “Zipper Merge.” Who else is going to combine James Brown’s “I Feel Good” with tap dancers. Who else is going to sing in all serious “Funky Baby Song” while his right hand and hype man plays a solo on a space flute. Who else is going to do an R & B love song about a “Stupid Fence” and have Joseph come out and provide an epic guitar solo.

A personal favorite was "Inigo Montoya” in which Heaton reenacted a major subplot to The Princess Bride with passionate Flamenco vibrato. Then it was both bands finishing the epic evening by playing Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al.”

By then there were close to 29 people on stage.

Mark Joseph (with Melvin Seals) Mark Joseph Mark Joseph

Heatbox and Mark Joseph

Heatbox Heatbox Heatbox

Heatbox and Mark Joseph at Fitzgerald Theater, St Paul (18 Nov 2023)

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