FRIDAY JAM: Albany’s G&S Experience set to release genre-defying debut album

ALBANY — In the world of modern music, there’s diverse, and then there’s G&S Experience.

Formed a little more than a decade ago by Berklee College of Music-trained studio rat Chevalier “Tom” Coleman, G&S has morphed into Southwest Georgia’s go-to band for musical promoters looking for a little eclecticism.

G&S — which also includes drummer Paul Ward, multi-instramentalist Fred Williams and bassist Jason McCoy — can definitely do eclectic, genre-hopping from song to song to song without losing so much as a beat. A G&S concert might feature a Stevie Wonder cover followed by a Guns ‘n’ Roses tune followed by a Steely Dan number followed by an old-school rock classic followed by a faithful take on Lil’ Wayne’s latest.

But more and more fans of the quartet have been clamoring lately for G&S originals, enthralled by the funked-up path down which the band leads its listeners.

Those fans’ fondest musical wishes will be granted today when G&S Experience unleashes its debut album “Horsemen.” Recorded at Mayfield Studios in Leesburg and engineered by Blake LeBlanc, the eight-song album offers tasty insight into a band with a multiple-personality complex … that being a good thing. Reviewers looking for a neat little category in which to place “Horsemen” will be driven to madness.

“If you want to talk about something for everyone, this is your album,” Coleman joked as he and the band members discussed their first release. “Every song on the album is a different kind of song. That was intentional. We used this to show our diverse musical interests.”

Indeed, “Horsemen” features the slow-jazz instrumental “Nice and Slow” — an Usher tune that is the only cover on the album — the funk instrumental title track, rocker “Frienemy,” techno/trance jam “Frienemy (Remix),” the country blues of “Too Bad,” the R&B track “Jump on It” and the hip-hop tune “Wanna Ride.”

Then there’s “Took So Long,” which Ward describes as “too different to know what it is.”

Coleman provides vocals on the album, with help from Portia Smith, Allison McCorkle and Natalie Diaz. There’s even a poetic interlude provided by Reginald “Poetic Mindz” Sweet. Coleman, the G&S mastermind, laid down the basic tracks for the tunes and then called in his bandmates, one-by-one, to record their parts.

“I really loved the process,” said McCoy, who started back playing three years ago after giving up music for more than a decade. “Since we recorded our parts separately, I didn’t know what the songs sounded like until we got a rough mix of the album. I was blown away when I heard it.”

Ward, whose work on the album won him sponsorships from Sound Percussion drumsticks and Remo drumheads, said he likes the fact that listeners won’t know what to expect when they check out “Horsemen.”

“This is the kind of album that people will be able to play 20 years from now, and it will hold up,” the drummer said. “Music now is in a phase where people have run out of fresh ideas. They’ve turned to samples to cover up that fact.

“With this album, you don’t know where you’re going. You may go into a love scene, and the next thing you know you’re in a Spanish scene and then you’re slow dancing and then listening to poetry. There definitely is a ‘Wow!’ factor to the album.”

All four band members confess that, even though they grew to love the music that they created and are thrilled that their album is now ready for the public, the process was a definite labor of love … emphasis on labor.

“There were a lot of long nights, a lot of late nights,” Williams, who played on friend and “American Idol” winner Phillip Phillips’ debut album, said. “There was also a lot of gigging to pay for the studio time. I think the fact that we self-financed the album brought us all closer together. We were all working for a common goal.”

“Horsemen,” the name based on the Biblical book of Revelations’ “four horsemen of the apocalypse,” will be unveiled tonight at G&S Experience’s gig at the 717 Lounge. Copies will be available (for $10) at that show and at the band’s performance Saturday during Mellow Mushroom’s Warrior Fest.

The album will also be available at cdbaby.com, iTunes, Rhapsody, amazon.com and at thegexperience.com. Digital copies of “Horsemen” will be available in two weeks.

“I absolutely got the album that I was hoping for,” Coleman said. “I’m very proud of what we’ve done. I think the quality of the songs made it easier for the band to gel in the studio. Frankly, I think we have a masterpiece, one of those albums that will hold its own 30 years from now.

“We finished the recording process at the end of December, and it took from January to March to get the mix just the way I wanted it. I’m one of those people who could live in a recording studio, and we were fortunate enough to have an engineer (LeBlanc) who was willing to work with us to make sure we got just what we wanted.”