Ladylike licks

>> Montreal's nameless, all-girl, neo-jazz organ trio

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Singers, pay attention. Disappear for a spell and your band may just become a whole other band. When the singer of nascent local female blues-rock outfit Shasta Jade went to Toronto, she left organist Vanessa Rodrigues, guitarist Donna Grantis and drummer JoAnn Blondin to their own devices. What resulted was an offshoot band in the future jazz-funk vein of Soulive and Medeski Martin & Wood.

"We just wanted to play together and feel out how the group would fit together," recalls Rodrigues, "and we had this amazing feeling. After the first tune, we were giggling like little girls! It was instant chemistry."

While Shasta Jade is still extant, as is Rodrigues's 11-piece funkestra Groove Prophecy ("A headache and a half," she says), the ladies are loving the tight yet informal feel of the jazz organ trio (so informal they've passed on taking a band name). "This is something I see actually going somewhere, because all three of us are so devoted to it. We're writing our own songs and even the covers we do are obscure. Not a lot of people know John Scofield's 'Chank.'"

The good thing about the all-XX lineup, to this writer anyway, is the absence of masculine wank and empty technical fireworks common to the coarser gender. "It's a paradox, almost. We made a point of being all girls, and by doing that, we made an issue out of gender. But it's a paradox in the sense that by being all women, we eliminate that weird testosterone ego vibe, and in turn can make it all about the music. It's not that we don't like playing with guys, but even in a mixed band, there's still a bit of that vibe. With just girls, it's completely gone."

So what does the future hold? Albums? Videos? A band name!?

"No, that's the thing. We've admitted defeat in that zone. We figure, we're just three funky ladies with a lot of soul, we don't really have to explain ourselves. We're just the big woman symbol," she says while drawing a circle and cross in the air, "the band not formerly known as anything!"

At Upstairs, Fri-Sat, Aug. 24-25, 10pm, $10