dbmandolin

The amazing jazz mandolinist Daniel Coolik of The Revelers stops by Mandolin Mondays this week to share a gorgeous take on this old Tin Pan Alley standard played on his personally modified Kalamazoo electric mandolin.



A consummate musician’s musician, Daniel Coolik, originally from Atlanta, Georgia, swept into the Lafayette, LA scene in 2009 and quickly added his name to many respectable rosters, loaning his talents to such groups as Cedric Watson & Bijou Creole, Les Malfecteurs, The Red Stick Ramblers, and helped found the GRAMMY nominated band The Revelers. Daniel was already an adept multi-instrumentalist in the Asheville, North Carolina scene where he focused on playing swing and jazz on guitar & mandolin as well as old time Appalachian traditional music, and has since emerged as a violoniste extraordinaire here in Acadiana. His abilities have taken him all over the globe, including Haiti, Thailand, most countries in Western Europe, and Canada. He is an in demand session musician who has played bass, guitar, mandolin, steel guitar, and fiddle on numerous recordings including the most recent release by Shovels and Rope (By Blood 2019). As of 2019, Daniel finished transcribing all of the notation for Ann Savoy’s 2nd volume of her acclaimed Cajun Music: A Reflection of A People.

Currently, aside from the Revelers, Daniel plays electric guitar, electric mandolin, and leads the band, Boma Bango, which explores the hypnotic, reverb drenched, tremolo-ed electric guitar heavy music from the 1960s that came out of the Congo. They have released some singles and have a full length record slated for release in late 2020. Also, he and musical compatriot Trey Boudreaux have an upright bass and electric mandolin duo where they play jazz and have an upcoming EP where they explore the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Most recently, he and Glenn Fields (drummer of the Revelers) started a podcast, Stories from the Middle, where they interview other musicians about the humorous and often overlooked world of the working musician.

Here's a word from Daniel about this video, "Here’s a condensed version of 'Lullaby of the Leaves,' an old Tin Pan Alley tune that I been playing for a while. Recently, I’ve been trying to practice playing as much bass, rhythm, and harmony on mandolin/guitar as I can get my hands and mind wrapped around. This is a short example of what would normally be 15-20 min exploration of all things that involve lullabies and leaves. Played on an old Kalamazoo mandolin that I mutilated and cut some holes into back in 2005 and installed a floating humbucker after I saw a video of Johnny Gimble - tuned low C to A. On this video, I’m playing through an old Versatone Pan-O-Flex amp that isn’t mine but lives in my house."

Be sure to connect with Daniel at the following links below for more information about his music:

http://revelersband.com
https://bomabango1.bandcamp.com
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1041487
https://www.instagram.com/mr.coolix/
https://www.instagram.com/bomabangoband/

And as always, tune in next week for more Mandolin Mondays! Until then...

Happy Picking!
David