Guy Smiley Blues Exchange - Voyager Magazine

GSBE's Graham Spice gets his groove on.

Story, photos, backing vocals and some percussion
by
Art Howard

There really should be a law regarding how many things a single person is allowed to be good at. Take Graham Spice of the Guy Smiley Blues Exchange, for example. Spice sits down at a keyboard -- wails. Then he picks up a trumpet -- wails. Turns to his Paul Reed Smith guitar -- also wails. And he's not finished. He's also a computer programmer who is devising software that is going to change the way you interact with your entertainment (see the end of this article.)

And then there's Spice's bandmates, who spend the night switching from one instrument to another, playing all of them as well as people who have specialized in a single instrument. On one hand you listen to the Guy Smiley Blues Exchange and smile, and at the same time you think, "IT'S JUST NOT FAIR!"

Search the funky horn band's roster for Guy Smiley and you won't find him. Search your childhood memory and you may remember he was a newscaster on Sesame Street. The guy leading the Blues Exchange, however, is Graham Spice. Spice began assembling his Blues Exchange seven years ago, and says of the name, "Well, the Blues Exchange, I learned that all modern music comes from the blues. I learned that from delving deep into the Allman Brothers and then taking it back into Robert Johnson and T-Bone Walker, all that kind of stuff. So we're kind of exchanging the blues for whatever we do. Touring on the road and playing music in general is not all fun. I thought having (Guy Smiley) in the band name would remind everyone in the band to keep their spirits up."

This guy played flute, ukelele, accordion, and hammer dulcimer -- with his tongue -- before the night was over. Not really.

The six-member band came together around Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. All but one member are graduates of the school, with music degrees. Upon first hearing their uptempo-Miles Davis sort of sound, it seems incongruous to their Nashville roots. Spice explains, "I always tell people that Nashville is the home of funk and the home of r&b and jazz, and maybe a few other styles, too." Okay. But how do fresh college graduates decide what "Music City" needs is some off-the-wall funk? "We all have pretty diverse interests, being kinda geeky music majors or whatever. We're just tying together all of our influences. If it comes across as an avant garde horn band -- so be it!"

This cat blows. Get it?

Though the official member count is six, each member plays several different instruments throughout the show, so the official instrumental capacity is more like 14. Sometimes they are joined by Nashville's DJ Viper. "As a matter of fact he's on the road right now with Hank Williams III," Spice says of the spinmaster, "An interesting juxtaposition of styles for sure! Its nice to see one of our friends hitting the 'high life' of music."

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