Short Turn by The 501 East

The Making of The Album “Short Turn”

There’s a saying in Costa Rica, “The shortest distance between two points is as the crow flies, the longest distance is the short cut.”

The individual members of “The 501 East” have been friends and musical compatriots for over four decades. We only put this band together some seven years ago. We began recording our first album, “Short Turn”, in 2019 as an off-the -floor studio project and continued to work on it through the pandemic until its completion five years later.

In Costa Rica the “Ticos” would say that we took the short cut.

There’s also the adage, “Necessity is the Mother of Invention”. The global isolation of those years made inventors of us all. Our OG plan was to do a “live” studio recording. Like everyone, we adapted to the world of 2020. It necessitated us to use the original recordings as bed tracks while finishing the album remotely, (with the augmentation of a few talented friends making guest appearances.)

The resulting sound has a blues, and jazz-influenced, Americana tone. We love retro, 1960s Go-Go grooves and largely use them as a starting place. Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder” is a perfect example of that iconic sound.

Our distinguishable characteristic is our arrangements with an emphasis on the unique, collective, sound of the band. That combined with improvisation and vocal scatting is helping us create our musical fingerprint.

The 501 East Band is a four-piece group which includes some of Canada’s top musicians: Russ Boswell on bass, Aidan Mason and Carlos Lopes on guitar, and Gary Craig on drums.

Their sound is improvisational within groove based arrangements and their original instrumental tunes reflect their combined incredible talent and extensive professional musical backgrounds.