Here you can find pix, stories and personal info about all your fave CASINO ROYALE members! Lisabell, Wes, John, Fuzzy, Matt, Chris, Susan, Spectre, Jamison, Danny -- they're all here! Click on a name below to jump to that person's section, or just scroll down.
Danny Shorago
Danny Shorago (vox) is a singer, filmmaker, writer, songwriter, and actor.
Danny attended UC Santa Barbara, where he majored in Film Studies and minored in Debauchery. While at Santa Barbara, Danny was a featured soloist in the UCSB Gospel Choir, played sitar in the Indian Music Ensemble for several months, and was the lead singer for the toilet-smashing band Earl, which one reviewer described as a "road accident between Frank Zappa, Muddy Waters, and the Smurfs." Danny also performed the supporting acting role of Frank, the Musician Zombie in the independent feature-length zombie musical film Death Licked My Face.
In 1997, Danny's short animated film Marylou had the distinction of screening not only at the Cannes and Sundance film festivals, but at Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation as well. Danny was the film's writer, co-director, and narrator; in addition, he co-wrote and performed on the film's musical score. Marylou has screened at film festivals across the world, and excerpts from the film have appeared onHBO.
In addition to performing with Casino Royale, Danny performs naughty children's ditties, wordless cartoon mini-operas, and duets with mechanical appliances in his band, the Vinyl Porkchops.
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Lisabell
As a child,
Lisabell (vox) first realized she wanted to perform when she and her cousin would do impressions of Janet and Randy Jackson imitating Sonny and Cher.
As an adult, Lisabell is now an accomplished singer-songwriter who, in addition to singing with
Casino Royale, also fronts her own band
Soultree. Her enthusiasms, however, go beyond these two bands; she enjoys working with different musicians and loves the challenge of learning new styles, having worked on recordings with
Regina Belle, the
Loved Ones, and
Swing Out Sister.
One of LB's favorite compliments came from a South American gentleman who thought she was Brazilian after hearing her sing Sergio Mendes' "Mas que nada" with
Casino Royale.
When Lisabell is not performing with
Casino Royale or Soultree or in the studio laying down tracks, this virgo enjoys shooting pool, reading groovy detective novels, lounging in front of the fireplace, and taking moonlit walks on the beach.
Schwing!
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Susan Z
Susan Z (vox) began her entertainment career as a "coffee table" dancer, performing for her family in their living room. "Forget kindergarten," said her grandmother. "She needs an agent!" Susan learned to play the piano at age 9, taught herself guitar when she was 13, at age 14 began taking singing lessons, acted in various plays and musicals throughout high school and college, and presently has her own original band,
Susan Z. (
www.susanz.com) Oh, and she got that agent.
She is currently in three national TV
commercials, (Pillsbury, Ameritech, US West), as well as dozens of regionals, industrials, and voiceover spots, along with two independent films. Most recently, Susan starred as
Maria in
West Side Story in Marin County's Mountain Play. As one of the lead singers for
Casino Royale, Susan hopes to become a millionaire.
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Spectre Lorry
Spectre
(bandleader & founder) plays guitar and sings backup in Casino Royale. As a child, Spectre learned how to play a variety of musical instruments and as a teenager, he became enamored with jazz and noise bands. He began to write arrangements and sent a few to Benny Stodgens who wrote the teenager back, encouraging him to pursue a career in music.
So Spectre enrolled in the Macow School of Music outside of Bregens, France in 1991.
In the late '90s, he began writing scores for record and film studios, first for a recording session by The Bel-Tones, and then for the film Lost Alaskan Women, the first movie he scored.
Soon, he was working on a large number of films and television programs frequently straddling the line between jazz and experimental electronics, making his music both distinctive and influential.
What keeps Spectre's work fresh is his ability to write in almost any style imaginable and his successful experimentations with unusual sounds and instruments.
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Matt Lebofsky
Matt (keys) started on piano at age three, took up guitar and bass
at thirteen, and then drums at nineteen. He now performs professionally
on
all these instruments (for example, he's played keyboards at the
2005 Screen Actor's Guild Awards after-party at the Shrine Auditorium
in LA, bass guitar in an indie rock band that toured America and
Europe,
drums at the legendary Bay Area jazz venue Yoshi's, and lead guitar in
a
math metal band in front of hundreds of prog rock geeks). A meticulous
yet efficient songwriter, he has written over two thousand tunes at
last
estimation. More than two hundred recent ones
are here. He
started in
Casino Royale as a bass sub back in the early days, and has
since
returned as the main keyboard guy. He currently also plays guitar in
Three Piece Combo, among
other things. As it turns out, he has a whole other life doing
development, maintenance, and data analysis for the
world's largest supercomputing
project which searches for extraterrestrial intelligence. Really.
Yet more info about Matt
is here.
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Chris Barnes
Chris Barnes (The Well Pierced Bald Man) is a versatile trumpet player who plays everything from classical to big band to speed metal. Over the years Chris has been seen on many stages throughout the United States and Europe including performances at the Montreaux, Umbria, Perugia, San Francisco, Concord, Santa Cruz, San Jose, and Monterey jazz festivals; The Concertgebouw, Gewandhaus, Shoreline Amphitheater, Concord Pavilion, and Davies Symphony Hall. In addition to playing with Casino Royale Chris is in high demand as a freelance player and has played with Smash Mouth, Billy Preston, Diana Krall, on the soundtrack to sega dream cast video game’s NFL2K1 and The Floigan Brothers; on the soundtrack to the Musical “Mountain Days;” at Willie Brown’s inauguration televised on CNN; in a performance with members of the Grateful Dead, San Francisco Symphony, and the San Francisco Youth Orchestra; and with Beach Blanket Babylon, Cold Blood, Fundamentals, Zazu Pitts Memorial Orchestra, Bill Hopkins, Full Motion, Wall Street, Vice Grip, Bay Boogie, Mood Swing Orchestra, Havana Blowcats, Anything She Wants, The Cool Katz, Kiss My Brass, Mike Vax Big Band, Carma Big Band, Contemporary Jazz Orchestra at Pearls, Black Market Jazz Orchestra, Fazmania big band, Metro Jazz Orchestra, Tim Price big band, Chop’s big band, Touch of Brass big band, Monterey Peninsula big band, California Symphony, Santa Cruz Symphony, Berkeley Symphony, Sacramento Philharmonic, San Francisco Concerto Orchestra, Classical Philharmonic, Modesto Symphony, Diablo Light Opera, Berkeley Opera, Fairfield Opera, San Francisco Brass Company, East Bay Brass Company, Fabulous Hedgehogs, Shadrack, Tito Garcia, Amambla Poets, and the Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps…just to name a few. In his spare time Chris likes to get new piercings.
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John Escalera
John Escalera (2nd trumpet) has been studying, teaching, playing, composing and performing music for over 20 years.
As a performer, John has played extensively with many Bay Area musical theatre companies including Pleasanton Playhouse, Contra Costa Music Theatre, Hayward Little Theatre, and the Hillbarn Theatre where he also had his acting debut playing Biff Baker in the musical production of 1940's Radio Hour.
He has enjoyed such playing positions as principal trumpet for the Livermore Valley Opera and has performed with numerous local orchestras and bands, including the Berkeley Symphony. He has performed with a wide variety of bands, ranging from Paramount's Great America to many cover, stage and original bands encompassing many diverse styles and genres.
He has started his own successful cover bands in the South Bay and has been recorded on original albums with Neosoreskin, The Kool Katz and now with Casino Royale. His trumpet can also be heard on the PC video game World War II Fighter by Electronic Arts. During the day John is currently the Jazz Instructor at Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco."
John holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from California State University Hayward.
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Jamison Reed
Jamison Reed (saxes, vox, bvox) feels undressed without a sax strap slung around his neck.Casino Royale finds him blasting the baritone or wailing the tenor, occasionally adding a string fill or a tympani roll with his wind synthesizer. On rare occasions he has even been known to forego the horns altogether, venturing to the front of the stage for a staggering and trippy rendering of "Incense and Peppermints."
His musical travels have taken him across the States many times, in addition to extensive stays in Europe and Brasil. He is happiest living out of a suitcase on a tour bus, checking into the local version of Motel 6.
His classical training has not hindered his ability to play from the heart. Past lives have found him playing jazz fusion, salsa/cumbia/merengue, Brasilian choros, Balkan Brass Band music, R'n'B/funk/soul, straight-ahead jazz, and Middle-Eastern rock. Currently he is working the salsa/mambo circuit with Tito Garcia's Orquesta Internacional and playing concerts with classical quartet the Sax Maniacs. (Yes, he agrees it's a dumb name.) When not performing he teaches private lessons to children, sowing the seeds of grooviness.
Yeah, baby.
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Fuzzy Marsupial
Fuzzy Marsupial (bass) has studied theory and composition with Sister Magdalen Fautch. He has performed and recorded as a bassist with Ebola Soup, Enac Enac, and Slack, and on various projects with members of The Probes, Clambake, Large Meal, Thing Eating Stuff, and the Manufacturing of Humidifiers. I swear to God I'm not making any of this up.
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Wes Anderson
Wes Anderson (drums) is a native of Oakland, CA, and has been playing drums since he was very small. He studied under funk/R&B master David Garibaldi, at PPSI with Scott Morris, and with Greg Sudmeyer.
As a juvenile he played punk with bands like S.O.S.A., Verbal Abuse, and Blind Illusion. Then for five years he toured the country wearing a large foam head and an inflatable head in the avant-rock troupe Idiot Flesh.
He is currently playing jazz with Crushing Spiral Ensemble, nerdy nerd-rock with Schloss, punk-rock with Kap, and klezmer-punk-Balkan-funk with Charming Hostess.
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Casino Royale Go Go Girls & Guys!
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Soraya
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Dayna
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Seamus
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Pamela
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Gretchen
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