Faldos Toy

Standing on the precipice of a new musical revolution is an inspiring proposition and the Faldo’s Toy quartet are charged with the promise of their future. Since their early days together, Faldo’s Toy — guitarist Jimmy Zeigler, keyboardist Jerry Merrill, drummer Ray Merrill and bassist Chris Galli (who replaced founding Faldo Chris Weinress) —have been taking musical risks while pushing the envelope of world fusion jazz. Simply put, the blend of traditional jazz, Latin inspired beats, rock guitars and funk grooves, along with a classic pop music formula, make Faldo’s Toy one of the most exciting modern day jazz bands playing. To be sure, this is not a responsibility the band takes lightly. “If you put on any San Francisco jazz radio station you won’t hear anybody that’s gone over the edge as much as we have,” Ziegler states. “That’s scary. That’s dangerous. We’re trying to light a fire under jazz music so the boundaries of music will get stretched. We’re trying to set a new precedent for what can be considered jazz.” “I think the thing that sets us apart from other fusion bands, and I hate to call us a fusion band because we’re not like the classic fusion bands, is that our melodies are really accessible,” drummer Merrill says. “The response that we get from crowds is that our music appeals to a wide range of people.” Jerry Merrill adds, “Our music is very progressive, yet it’s very melodic and hooky, kind of like pop music. That isn’t being done by anybody that I know of. To a certain extent, some of the groups like The Yellowjackets or Rippingtons began to blaze that trail, but we walk further down it by combining a little bit harder influences with even more simple melodies.” Faldo’s Toy latched onto a music-first philosophy soon after they decided to start playing instrumental jazz music in 1996. A series of live shows and a ton of practice sessions later, the band found a sound that was as relevant as it was risky. By eschewing their comfort base — for Zeigler it was rock music, for Jerry Merrill it was classical and old-school jazz and for the rhythm section of Ray Merrill and Galli it was everything from Afro-Cuban music to pop to Brazilian jazz — the quartet discovered a common language. “Icon,” the band’s first recorded offering, laid the groundwork for the band’s continued growth. The album’s opening track, “Worm Hole” is an introduction to how Faldo’s Toy attacks and blends divergent musical genres. The song opens with a rock-fueled Ziegler guitar solo that bends into a Merrill jazz laced piano movement, on top of a deep pocket head bopping rhythm track. Yet “Icon” is not just easily accessible tracks. After all, this is a band of career musicians who love to be challenged. The song “Faldo’s Toy” is played in seven and “Zeno’s Paradox” is in five. Ray Merrill points out that there is a simple reason for the stretch. “If there is something in an odd meter we’re not just doing it to be clever,” he explains. “We wrote it that way for the music. We’re always writing one way or another because that’s the way the song should go. We’re very attentive to the listener’s perspective, not just the player’s perspective.” Perhaps that is the most dangerous part of the Faldo’s Toy approach — writing music that listeners can appreciate and understand at a moment’s notice.