About

From R&B to samba, from the swing of Duke Ellington to the free jazz of Albert Ayler, Hyllus & The Veligers play pertinent music with vintage vibes across a considerable range of early-to-mid 20th century popular genres. But their spiritual roots lie in the soul and style of the very early Chicago blues, a style rarely heard live today. Along with regular members David Fryer and Jesse O’Neill on guitar, Henry Fitzpatrick on bass, and Tommy Jackson on drums, a rotating cast of New York City’s finest up-and-coming players comprise the full band, which Hyllus has named for the veliger (the baby sea snail). Like young sea creatures, The Veligers embody a wavy, bouncy groove that long ago defined the sound and dance styles of this iconic post-war American art form. As bandleader, Hyllus sings and plays harmonica through a variety of traditional equipment, including a 1946 Astatic JT-30 microphone and a one-of-a-kind Bogen amplifier that was built in the 1940s and which he nourishes with an array of guitar pedals in order to evoke the signature sounds of the early releases from Chess Records. This old school vibe is then augmented and transformed by music incorporating a range of modern sensibilities, and (occasionally) dips into the realms of the experimental. The result is a uniquely crafted experience, plunging audiences deep within an unexplored past, and surfacing them again towards a familiar future.

The Veligers place special focus on the music of Little Walter, who was the first musician to use distortion and was in many ways the originator of rock and roll music; Big Walter, considered by many to be the most under-appreciated harmonica virtuoso of his time; and Sonny Boy Williamson II, senior to both of them and who found success in both urban and rural venues over the course of his long career. These giants of Chicago rhythm and blues are taken as points of departure into the songs of Jimmy Reed, Junior Wells, The Inkspots, Jackie Wilson, Sydney Bechet, Geoff Muldaur, Peer Raben, Jazz Gillum, and many others. The Veligers take these standards as a lineage and a foundational spirit, and from there depart into the uncharted. Their music will move you in ways at once nostalgic and peculiar, intimate yet galvanizing, and above all, eminently groovy.