What does it mean to be in a Beautiful Sunshine Band? Are the instruments brightly colored? Are special outfits required? Surely, there must be a daily parade of some kind?

For jazz drummer and composer Cory Healey, creating a Beautiful Sunshine Band was more about contrasting the dark mood of his work with a tongue-in-cheek name.

"We try to have a sense of humor with everything we do," Healey says.

On his group's debut album, Beautiful Sunshine, Healey and his cohorts blur the lines that we didn't even know existed between free jazz, bebop, ambient music, and doom metal.

"I just like a lot of different types of music. I have a background in jazz, I went to school for jazz, but I also really like heavy metal and indie rock," he says. "My approach to composition is that I want to organize sound in a really meaningful way. I'm not interested in defining genre; I just want to use sounds I like."

The record is out this week on Shifting Paradigm Records, which is run by a collective of jazz musicians from the Twin Cities (including the Beautiful Sunshine Band's guitarist, Zacc Harris), and Healey says the label has helped foster a sense of community that he's come to appreciate since moving to Minneapolis from Chicago.

"A great aspect of working with Zacc and Shifting Paradigm is that he's really open to letting us express this vision that we'd like to express. There's no pressure to have it be a certain type of jazz. I think the sense of community is created because everybody is so open to each individual's vision."

Cory Healey's Beautiful Sunshine Band will celebrate the release of their new album on Thursday, March 24, at Vieux Carre in downtown St. Paul.

Performers

Cory Healey (drums)
Erik Fratzke (bass)
Zacc Harris (guitar)
Jake Baldwin (trumpet)
Brandon Wozniak (tenor saxophone)

Songs

"Ralphy"
"Aragon"

Credits

Hosted by Andrea Swensson
Produced by Evan Clark and Andrea Swensson
Engineered by Evan Clark
After Hours Theme by Andrea Swensson, performed by Cory Healey's Beautiful Sunshine Band