The Paper Moon Jazz Band is dedicated to the jazz standards of the Swing Era and the music of guitarist Django Reinhardt.
The Providence-based band’s inspiration comes from the big bands of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, along with musical styles played in the cafes of Paris and the brassy sound of New Orleans.
Members include Dylan Harley on rhythm guitar/vocals, John Birt on lead guitar, Albert Behar on accordion, and Casey Belisle on drums.
Here is a conversation with Belisle. The full interview can be found here.
Casey Belisle says that musical timing is based on fours. Rock ‘n’ roll and gospel music are generally in the 4/4 signature or common time, while waltzes are mostly written in 3/4 time.
“Like Dave Brubeck had this song called “Blue Rondo à la Turk” that was in this grouping of three that came out to nine and it was 9/8,” Belisle says. “It just blew my mind like that a rhythm could be like this.”
Belisle said he discovered a genre of music from the late 1990s and early 2000s called Math Rock.
“It is like punk rock with all these, you know, numbers thrown around like, let’s play in four, but then let’s go to five and let’s go to like three,” he says. “And then maybe like a couple stops polyrhythms of just trying to think of something in like seven. Right? So Crazy. It was just nuts to me that all this music existed.”
In 2022, Belisle met Harley, who invited him to sit in with the Paper Moon Jazz Band. At the time it was a duo with Harley and Birt.
“They took me under their little jazz wing and we went for a ride and it was really, really fun,” Belisle says. “And as I started to play this style of stuff, like I found myself channeling all of my musical roots to help in ... curating the style, always trying to serve the song.
“And it’s, yeah, I just, I can’t help but be a sponge to a lot of the music I’ve been influenced by.”
