Nate LaPointe:
When he’s not touring with the Nate LaPointe Band, Nate tours with Jason & deMarco, as well as other bands, playing 150 shows/year with SoCal’s premiere Grateful Dead Tribute band Cubansis, among other projects.
Nate is the guitarist for soul/R&B legend Bobby Womack when he’s touring. Nate has also worked with such greats as Dave Mason, Vince Welnick, Charlie Haden, Bloodstone and even opened for BB King on his 80th birthday tour.
Chris Payne:
Chris comes to Jason & deMarco as a graduate of Cal Arts in Southern CA and has been touring with the Nate LaPointe band for the past several years, playing drums and percussion. In addition to playing across the country, Chris also teaches percussion in Los Angeles.
Ivan Johnson:
Ivan Johnson, from Los Angeles, has performed all over the United States, Canada and Europe with an eclectic group of ensembles, and made his solo debut at the 2003 Athens Music Festival in Athens, GA. Ivan’s current projects include the Lian ensemble – a classical Persian group which stretches the boundaries of traditional Iranian music; Dark Wing plays a unique bend of world music using free improvisations and original composition for marimba, strig bass, tar, setar, ney and a variety of percussion instruments; the Empty Cage Quartet, a jazz quartet focused on improvisation and composition; and the Nate Lapointe Band, a rootsy eclectic songwriting and improvising group that recently has had the pleasure of playing with Jason and deMarco.
Ivan is head of the jazz program at Oakwood High School in Los Angeles, and he co-founded the Academy of Creative Music. Recently, Mr. Johnson was the Assistant Music Director for the world premiere of the critically acclaimed opera “The Peach Blossom Fan,” working closely with Stephen Merritt from the Magnetic fields, and has been an Artist In Residence at Stanford University, performing music by Brian Ferneyhough and Mark Applebaum.
