When the group takes the stage at The Custer Beacon before Custer’s Fourth of July fireworks, it won’t be a touring band or even a permanent one. It’s a one-night gathering of musicians who spend the rest of the year leading their own projects, backing other artists, and filling stages across western South Dakota.
Alex Massa laughs when he tries to describe it.
“It’s kind of a super band situation,” he said. “We do a little bit of original music, but really kind of form it in the spirit of the super bands that happened during the New Orleans Jazz Fest, where cats from all different styles and genres and scenes kind of come together just to shred with one another.”
That idea has brought together guitarist Chris Mangione, bassist and sousaphone player Jimmy Reed, drummer Eric Boyd, trombonist Danny Thornburg, saxophonist Sivan Hoch, and Alex Massa on trumpet and vocals.
Mangione brings jazz and classical guitar into the mix after years in music education. Reed is a familiar face with groups like The Pocket Junkies, the Blue Collar Brass Band, the Reed Brothers Band, and backing soul artist Tanner Johns. Boyd performs with blues, funk, rock, jazz, and Americana projects throughout the Black Hills. Hoch, a Black Hills-based multi-instrumentalist, leads The Pocket Junkies and appears on The Fat Trio’s debut album, Dancing With Trolls. Thornburg leads the South Dakota Jazz Orchestra and performs with his own Funky All-Stars, while Massa has spent years building collaborative music projects through Improvise Arts..
The common thread isn’t a genre or a set list, it’s a group of musicians who already know how to listen to one another.
“Everybody in the scene has their own strengths,” Massa said. “I think that’s what makes the Black Hills music scene really unique.”
The result is a show built on a foundation of funk, fusion, jazz, American standards, original music, and improvisation.
Massa said he normally avoids holiday performances, preferring to let musicians spend those days with family. When the invitation came to play before Custer’s fireworks during America’s 250th birthday celebration, he saw an opportunity to honor the music that shaped the country itself.
“All of that music really centers and celebrates what made American culture great, which is Black music and Black culture,” Massa said. “Every single music that is native to the United States of America was born” from the Black American experience.
Rather than turning the evening into a patriotic spectacle, Massa said he sees the show as a way to honor the people who carry the country in ordinary, necessary ways: the musicians, workers, neighbors, and service industry staff who keep small towns alive long after the fireworks are over.
“It’s all of us with our boots on the ground,” he said, describing everyone from musicians playing winter bar gigs to nurses, restaurant workers, janitors, and the people who keep communities running.
