Walking down a short staircase no more than two and a half feet in width, I step onto beer soaked astroturf dimly illuminated by hanging Christmas lights. Moving past two kegs at the bottom of the stairs, I push through a crowd of stripe clad twenty-somethings, towards the back of the room. The ceiling is no more than 6 1/2 feet tall, and at its widest, the room is ten feet in width. As I approach, I hear four clicks of the drumsticks as Sauce launches into its New Years Eve show.
Sauce, a self-proclaimed live funk band, consists of Philadelphia residents Pedro Purcell on drums, Robert Hassl on the keys, and a rotating cast of lead, rhythm, and bass guitar of Mike Paszkiewicz, Nick Kaulback, and JP Moynihan, who also provides vocals.
Purcell and Paszkiewicz began playing music together as far back as middle school in Baltimore. Attending High School together, Paszkiewicz began giving guitar lessons to Moynihan. “He was my guitar teacher. I was playing with Mike every day junior and senior year of high school. We’d leave school and go back and jam... I learned a lot of stuff. I pretty much owe everything I know to Mike,” Moynihan said.
The lessons proved to be mutually beneficial, as Paszkiewicz gained inspiration from playing with Moynihan. “I wasn’t really writing or playing that much music before me and JP started playing... it kind of revitalized what I thought I was doing on guitar. That’s when we started writing song. That is kind of the roots of the earliest Sauce songs,” Paszkiewicz said.
With two guitarists in Moynihan and Paszkiewicz and a drummer in Purcell, the trio began playing music in Pedro’s mother’s basement together, under the name Good Applesauce.
In 2011, Paszkiewicz, and Purcell moved to Philadelphia to attend Temple University. There, Kaulback, a fellow Temple student, was introduced to the band. Practicing in Kaulback’s South Philadelphia house, Sauce began to gain cohesion and a feel for one another’s musicianship. “A lot of things just go without being said with what we do live because we are a little bit inside of each other’s heads. We kind of know what’s coming next when we hear the other person playing. So it’s a back and forth kind of thing,” Paszkiewicz said.
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| Photo Credit Jessica Snyder |
That same year, Moynihan met Hassl back in Baltimore. “We worked together at Carrabba’s and started hanging out. I wasn’t going to school for a semester and he (Moynihan) was going to CCBC. So we started hanging out and jamming until JP moved to Philly also. The summer after that, they said they had a spot in the house and I should come up, so I made the decision to do that. ” Hassl said.
As Sauce tears through it’s New Years set, the crowd is growing more and more frantic. Sweat soaked and filled with Pabst, about 60 spectators dance as Sauce progresses through their performance. Flanked by tapestries glowing with more Christmas lights, Purcell and Hassl are sitting at the drums and keyboard, respectively, behind Paszkiewicz, Kaulback and Moynihan who command down-stage, no more than a foot away from the crowd.
In 2012, the “Sauce House” was conceived. All five members moved into a three level row home in North Philadelphia. Equipped with a basement, Sauce now had a formal practice space, as well as a venue to host shows. “It qualified as a fourth world country,” Paszkiewicz joked. He continued,“That place was trashed...But at the same time, we had some of the best experiences playing shows there.”
Playing mostly house parties for Temple students and friends, Sauce began garnering a following. “It started out with us having people over and then they’d want us to play so we would. It would turn into a house show and then more people started showing up and it became the Sauce House,” Paszkiewicz said.
Performing with other Temple acts, namely DJ Anlbvrst (stage moniker of Kevin Moran) the Sauce House began to emerge as a weekend destination for Temple students. “Kevin helped a lot. He used to just text everyone on his contact list, like ‘yo, come out!’ He networked us pretty hard,” Moynihan said.
On top of providing exposure, Analbvrst helped lay the foundation for funk at Temple. “It started a new funk thing at Temple, I think. There were hints of it but people really started to dig funk because of DJ Anlbvrst. It’s different than what most kids see at Temple and they like it,” Moynihan said.
It’s nearly 12 midnight, and Sauce is still going strong. They’ve played through a rendition of the Hey Arnold Theme and are moving into 2001. As the clock moves towards the New Year, Sauce stops playing and Moynihan starts a countdown from 10. The crowd joins in, and upon reaching 0, champagne erupts, showering everyone; it’s now 2013. Sauce closes out the set, making way for an Anlbvrst set that stretches deep into the morning.
Despite the abundance of live shows played, Sauce just recently released their first recording of their October 12th Grape Room show. “The first time we released something we wanted to really make sure it slapped people in the face,” Paszkiewicz explained.
Having progressed past basement shows in the Sauce House, Sauce hopes to continue exploring new venues. “We’ve gone from loving the basement shows to now switching to us wanting to play bars. In a lot of cases, they are just better sounding shows. It takes so much of the burden off of us, all we have to worry about is playing,” Paszkiewicz said.
On top of higher sound quality, Purcell explained the draw to playing paid gigs, “we didn’t make more than, like, $10 on a show until the last show when we made $400. That was a huge confidence builder, too... Finding out that we could actually make money off of it.”
Although no plans have been made officially, Sauce hopes to take to the road on tour, as well as spend time in a studio recording. Upcoming shows include The Green Turtle in Towson on Friday, November 29th at 9:30 pm and another Grape Room show on November 30th.
