BELOVED COLLABORATORS: Marc Muller (guitars, pedal steel, fiddle, banjo, uke, mandolin, bass, drums, keyboard & songwriting) Jonathan Feinberg, Joe Berardi, Dean Sharenow, Andy Sanesi, the late Dan Morris (drums) Bill Ruyle, Deep Singh (percussion) Marc Doten (bass & songwriting) Michael Webster (keyboards & songwriting) Joe Moe (vocals & writing) Elma Mayer (vocals & songwriting & tough love) Peter Lurye (songwriting) Jim Kimo West (guitar, ukulele) Dan Levine, Jerry Wheeler (trombone) Aaron Heick, Steve Elson, Matt Darriau, Glen Berger, Mark Hollingsworth, Kurt Hoffman, Phillip Johnston & Doug Wieselman (woodwinds) Oren Bloedow, Joe Quigley, Mark Dresser, Erik Boyd, Dan Lutz (bass) Jim O'Connor, Frank London, Chris Tedesco (trumpet) Nick Ariondo, Guy Klucevsek (accordion) Ethan Iverson, David Witham, Eli Brueggeman (piano) Stephanie Courtney, Deb Hiett, Carmel Echols, Jill Sobule, Bill Burnett, Terre Roche, Brian Dewan, Chris Rael, Lisa Loeb, Dubley Saunders, Kathi Funston, Sandy Shimoda, Tracey Moore (vocals) Sean Altman, Andrew Wyatt, Rob Shapiro (vocals & songwriting) Sean Hartley, Clay Zambo, Eddie Sugarman, Bob Goldberg, McPaul Smith, Joanne Bogart, Paul Perry, Stew, Mitchell Kriegman (songwriting)
alumni:
Tom Rettig, Rick Crawford, Deane Rettig, Steve Knopoff, Tim Song Jones, Carmen Borgia, Ed Summerfield, Rick Crawford, David (Arney) Friendly, Steve Christian, Erling Wold, Lynn Wold, Everett Shock, Mark Crawford, Matthew Metzgar, Chris Klich, Nik Phelps, Victor P. Zupanc, Dave Blackburn, Mark Nemoyten, Stephanie Sweeney, Elizabeth Shaler, Frank (Skip) Martinelli, the late Bonnie Gere and many more
Influences
Harold Arlen; Bad Plus; Captain Beefheart; Luciano Berio; Leonard Bernstein; Carla Bley; Johannes Brahms; Dave Brubeck; Elliott Carter; George Clinton; Duke Elllington; Fred Frith; Gentle Giant; George & Ira Gershwin; Gilberto Gil; Yip Harburg; Lorenz Hart; Fletcher Henderson; Henry Cow; Friedrich Hollander; Jethro Tull; Tom Lehrer; Lennon/McCartney; Gyorgy Ligeti; Frank Loesser; Alan Menken; Charlie Mingus; Joni Mitchell; Oregon; Van Dyke Parks; Parliament/Funkadelic; Lenny Picket & the Borneo Horns; Sergei Prokoffiev; Richard Rodgers; Scritti Politti; Stephen Sondheim; Cat Stevens; Sly Stone; Richard Strauss; James Taylor; Chris Thile; Henry Threadgill; Weather Report; Brian Wilson; Stevie Wonder; Yes; Frank Zappa
Sounds Like
They Might Be Giants, Van Dyke Parks, XTC, James Taylor, Carla Bley, Henry Threadgill, Stephen Schwartz
I'm a repatriated Los Angeles songwriter and composer, having lived in New York from 1986 to 2001.
I began performing at the age of 11. I studied musical comedy and songwriting with Tom Lehrer at UC Santa Cruz. I studied music composition with Bernard Rands and Pauline Oliveros at UC San Diego.
I founded and led several bands including the avant-new-wave Some Philharmonic, the 14-piece new music/jazz ensemble Variety Orchestra and the downtown Popular Music Group.
I've collaborated with numerous songwriters including Van Dyke Parks.
My music straddles an eccentric line between theater, pop and oddball.
DISCOGRAPHY
TOWN & COUNTRY (TBA) -- I'm hard at work on a new CD, a collection of country and not country songs, some of whom are demoed here.
MAINLAND by Joe Moe (TBA 2008) -- I co-produced with Michael Webster and Marc Doten an eclectic mix of originals and covers by this incredible Hawaiian latter-day crooner
VARIETY ORCHESTRA (2004) -- large ensemble post-modern jazz compositions, with tons of great musicians
THE BRIAN WOODBURY SONGBOOK (2000) -- art pop songs featuring a host of singers, including Jill Sobule, Terre Roche of the Roches, David Yazbek (composer/lyricist of Broadway’s The Full Monty) and Sean Altman of Rockapella. A concert version of this project featured Lisa Loeb.
BRIAN WOODBURY AND HIS POPULAR MUSIC GROUP (1992) -- quirky pop ala XTC, They Might Be Giants
ALL WHITE PEOPLE LOOK ALIKE (1987) -- "The epic, twenty-minute-plus title track bounces feverishly from one musical genre to another, grounded to its theme by an hysterical spoken-word observation on racial politics and other societal absurdities." according to Michael Allen of CD Baby
FORBIDDEN KISS by vocalist Najma Akhtar -- a CD of the classic Indian film songs of S.D. Burman, produced by Chris Rael, for which I did orchestrations.
TV
I wrote the theme song for PEPPER ANN, and co-wrote the theme for TEACHER'S PET, both Saturday morning cartoons on ABC. I was the supervising songwriter on Disney’s BOOK OF POOH and for Jim Henson’s BEAR IN THE BIG BLUE HOUSE, both on the Disney Channel.
THEATER
KILLA VANILLA -- an island surf musical I'm developing with Joe Moe and my wife Elma Mayer. We've had readings at the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and at the Academy for New Musical Theatre.
WHERE I'M COMING FROM -- a teen pop musical, in collaboration with Joe Moe
SPACE OPERA -- a musical about a post-Apocalyptic colony on Mars, run by right wing extremists, in collaboration with Joe Moe
MCCARTNEY MEETS BERIO -- an opera fantasy based on an actual encounter between the Beatle and the Italian avant garde maestro in the Swinging London of 1966.
TWENTIETH CENTURY LIMITED (1992) -- a revue I wrote and performed in collaboration with my
sister, actress/playwright Heather Woodbury.
SPLENDRIX (1989) -- a multi-media theater piece set in a corporate office, in collaboration with Erling Wold, Lynn Murdock, Everett Shock and Bob Adams.
Hi. Thanks for your friendship and giving our tunes a listen. We appreciate your honest comments. Great to hear from such a talented and established musician. Cheers.
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