Men in Route

Men in Route were born in Padova in December 2005. It all started with four friends, drawn together by years of boy scouting, who decided to take on some music. They first go public on New Year's Eve, December 2005. Behind the mic and his guitar is Giovanni Tamburini, accompanied by Giovanni (Zob) Danieli at the electric guitar, Marco (Ripe) Ripellino at the Djembe and Giovanni Marcuzzo handling a bass guitar lent to him a few days earlier. The success gives them confidence and they decide to go on. As it was the sound didn't work. The four friends asked Matteo, trumpet player and longtime friend, to join them. In five months they start putting together a number of cover songs that mirror the musical tastes of each one and that range from Italian singer Jovanotti to the longstanding Cure. On their second public appearance, for the singer's birthday party, on the 23rd of May 2006, his cousin Luca joins the formation, skilled at the piano but especially at the saxophone. They were now ready for their first official gig, with the name of Men in Route, thought in origin by Zob for a raggae band (Men in roots). Their performance, opening the concert of the renowned Mercanti di Liquore, renews the enthusiasm while showing the limits of the still immature formation. A band isn't such without a drummer, so in the summer Alberto, already choir director and pianist, joins the group, buys a drum set and starts practicing. More performances follow. During winter 2006 the band spends many hours working on introducing a number of original songs to replace the covers. The new songs are well received and are almost always the result of a teamwork. At the moment, the band is writing and a working on their own pieces. The characteristic of MiR is to avoid a uniform style, ranging from acustic-melodic tones to more ska-punkish sounds to neo-swing liveliness, the top objective being to keep songs catchy and danceable. A strong contribution, in terms of musical experience, comes from Rizia, former trumpet and guitar player for Biderben, and the band starts counting quite a number of successful gigs. A further addition comes with Luca's pianist brother Marco, in October 2007, and a few months later Stefano (Pich) takes Alberto's place behind the drum set. After two years of playing together they released their first demo: 'Ndemo! (Veneto dialect for "Let's Go!") and present a formation of nine elements: Giovanni (Gianni) - guitar, vocals Giovanni (Zob) - electric guitar Giovanni - bass guitar Matteo - trumpet Luca - alto sax Andrea (Rizia) - trumpet Marco (Ripe) - congas, drum machine Marco - electric piano Stefano (Pich) - drums THEY SAY OF THEMSELVES "The band draws from a wide repertoire that mixes Giuliano Palma's bluebeat and Tre allegri ragazzi morti, passing through jazz standards, Ray Collins's swing and some ska classics. But the cover songs start being outnumbered by our own, starting from "We are the Men in Route". It will be the critics' job to imprison us in a style... for now we roam free, along the road, doing whatever we feel like..." Men in Route on Myspace Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.