Ex-Cop Brings Music & Family Feel To Westville

The Skamatix were playing. Some of them live right up the street. People were dancing. They live up the street too — and in at least one case were related to the musicians.

That was the scene at Westside Bar & Grille Friday night right off Whalley Avenue in the heart of Westville Village.

And that was the scene retired cop Keith Wortz had in mind when he opened the place in May.

“The two previous businesses were very college-orientated, and I think a lot of people, when they know the location, they think it’s a college bar and it really isn’t,” said Wortz.

The married father of four said he wanted a family-oriented place where people could be comfortable and enjoy a good meal at a fair price — and occasional live music from local musicians. 

Wortz (pictured) said all types of bands come to play on Wednesdays and Fridays.

“Some are a little bit heavier; some are a little more jazzy,” he said.

Friday night, local band ​“The Skamatix” entertained a mixed-age crowd. The band was throwing a CD release party. It gave away a five-song CD, for donations. All five band members live nearby.

“It’s a nice place,” said keyboardist and vocalist Nate Trier, who put together the Skamatix with trumpeter Tim Kane, who’s also from Westville. ​“We come here with our families, we have dinner here, we grab a couple of beers with our friends.” 

The Skamatix plays original material, as well as some covers of artists like John Coltrane and Bob Marley.

People danced and sang along to their rendition of Marley’s ​“Concrete Jungle.” ​“They’re fun,” said Susan Rubinsky (pictured). Rubinsky called the band a ​“be happy and dance kind of fun.”

As the band played, some other patrons hung out in an area off to the side with a pool table and foosball table. Neither game takes coins for play.

“It’s a tough economy” to be starting a business in, Wortz noted. He said he opened the restaurant and bar not just to make money. ​“I love the social interactions.” Wortz said he wants to add to the variety of Westville village and become a part of the community that is the village.

“Variety is the spice of life,” said Wortz. ​“Delaney’s is diagonally across the street, they’re a great place. You’ll find me across the street.” 

Wortz said he would never try to compete with Delaney’s’ wide variety of beers. ​“I’m a beer connoisseur, and I’ve loved Delaney’s since the day that they’ve opened,” he said. 

He said he invites other business owners’ patrons to use the large parking lot that comes with his space. He said he just wants more people to come into the village, and hopefully they’ll stop at Westside. ​“I lived here back in 1984,” said Wortz, ​“and that parking lot has been used by anybody that’s ever come from the village. As far as I’m concerned, that parking lot belongs to the village.”

Wortz said a new gourmet menu coming out next week will include lobster mac & cheese made from scratch. Westside chef Jason Briggs attended Johnson & Wales University in Providence.

“We do not freeze things, everything’s fresh,” said Wortz. ​“Our chicken tenders are actually tenderloins that we remove from whole chicken breasts, made right there. It’s not like something you’d buy frozen.” 

Trier said he’s found his place and he’ll be back.

“The owner’s real nice,” he said, ​“it’s a friendly place for everyone to come and hang out. It’s not too crazy, but you get all kinds [of people] here. It’s great. We’re trying to make it the Westville hangout.”

“You got these Westville guys, they come together and make a Westville band, they’re playing in a Westville bar, all your Westville friends come,” said Kim Rogers, whose husband, Mike Rogers plays bass for The Skamatix. ​“Westville is a community like no other.”

For more information, go to Westside Bar & Grille’s Facebook page.

Reggae Roots

David Sepulveda of Westville was at Friday night’s show and knows the band. He submitted the following write-up:

The upstroke, or ​“skank” as it is sometimes called, is part of the characteristic sound of ska, a musical genre that began in Jamaica in the 1950s, and is at the heart of music being created by a Westville-based band called The Skamatix. On Dec. 4, the six- piece band held a CD release party at the Westside Bar and Grill, a new restaurant/bar that seems to be striking the right notes with Westville residents and visitors.

The self-titled, self-released CD, is the product of a recording made at Hamden’s Books & Company book store on March 20, 2009 and includes five tracks of mixed instrumental and cover songs including the Otis Redding classic, ​“Dock of the Bay.” Guest trombonist Sarah Politz is also featured. The band has been honing its Ska-infused sound for two years and has played Westville’s Artwalk, the Farmer’s Market, The Space and many private engagements and benefits. Their website (www.theskamatix.com) describes the music as a ​“blend of ska and rocksteady from the 50’s and 60’s with jazz; our music is a mellow, sexy blend of skankin’ rhythms and luscious harmonies.”

Ska shares similarities with reggae, the musical form popularized by the Jamaican sounds of cross-over bands like Bob Marley and the Wailers, but goes beyond reggae’s earliest roots as the precursor of the uptick beat with which many are familiar. Motioning with short air-guitar strokes, Skamatix guitarist David DiMario demonstrated how the word ​“ska” resulted from chopping or scratching sound, but the word’s etymology has been linked to other possible sources as well.

Just after World War Two, Jamaicans began tuning in to American radio in great numbers. Influenced by the sounds of jazz and rhythm and blues, and without the strictures of copyright laws, they began to meld the new sounds with their traditional Island rhythms of calypso and other Caribbean influences. The pattern of cross-fertilization of rhythms would continue to spawn other musical adaptations in England, during a second wave. Owing to the multi racial make up of many bands, the term 2 Tone was coined. In the 1970s, Ska would be appropriated by punk rock groups with a faster, hard-edged sound and driving guitar cords. Beginning in the 1990’s, a third wave of ska-influenced music took root in the United States in a post-punk movement that relied more heavily on brass instrumentation. Punk-influenced bands like Mighty Mighty Bosstones achieved significant notoriety while regional ska-based groups continued to emerge, reflecting influences of previous Ska periods to varying degrees.

So how was it that a Westville-based band of came to adopt a musical genre rooted in a nation sixteen hundred miles away? Each band member has a story and the stories divide among those that have had a long history with Reggae and Ska, and those that up until their recruitment into the band two years ago, had little-to-no knowledge of the musical form. Guitarist/vocalist David DiMario formed his own Reggae band after being exposed to the sound at a concert decades ago. It was the audience interaction with the music, that ultimately hooked him. ​“I had no outlet for the music so I started my own band” he said. His group opened for Peter Tosh and Jimmy Cliff, then some of Reggae’s biggest acts and included gigs at New Haven’s Toad’s place. DiMario ultimately quit the music scene fifteen years ago to take a burn-out induced hiatus, but decided to return after being contacted by the band’s leader and youngest member, Nathan Trier.

Trier, a jazz aficionado who formed the group, has been interested in the ska musical genre for a long time. He is a private music teacher, and is enrolled in the State of Connecticut’s ARC or Alternative Route to Certification program and is hoping to land a full-time teaching job in the public school system. He also hosts a bi-monthly jazz radio program on 88.7 FM, WNHU. The admitted ​“taskmaster” and keyboard player of the group, Trier can also be seen playing a variety of wind instruments throughout sets, including the euphonium, and an unusual wind-activated keyboard called a melodica. Did I mention the man can sing?

Trumpet player and vocalist Tim Kane, the band’s most animated member, was introduced to Ska and Reggae by a Jamaican roommate in college and was well-versed in the ska genre before joining the band. His dance antics during their lively ​“Monkey Man” tune, is always a highlight, drawing smiles of approval from the audience. Like other of the band members, Kane occasionally teams with musicians of every stripe outside of the group, and is well known to Westville audiences as the trumpet and keyboard player for the The Lost Forty Fives, a Westville rock band.

Band drummer John Columbus, of Hamden, often hidden behind the front men and a screen of cymbals and music stands, is a feature writer and photographer for Connecticut Magazine. Columbus teamed with band guitarist David DiMario years ago and has been playing Reggae and Ska beats for decades, along with everything from jazz to doo-wop to rock.

Amazingly, before joining the band, two Skamatix members had little familiarity with ska. Jim Berger, who describes ska as being like reggae ​“but with less smoke,” plays the euphonium and valve trombone. A classically trained musician who teaches American Studies at Yale, Jim literally stumbled into the band. On the occasion of one of Tim Kane’s legendary third-of-July parties, he heard the sound of live music from a nearby house and decided to ​“investigate” the party with euphonium in tow. Not long after that fortuitous event, Jim was asked to join the band, helping to round out the horn section.

New, not only to ska and reggae, but to guitar playing itself, is bass player Mike Rogers. A skilled auto parts machinist and engineer, Rogers is the go-to tech wizard who has made equipment repairs for musicians both in and out of the group. He picked up the electric bass for the first time less than ten years ago, after only two years of six-string guitar lessons. Beginning as a guitar technician for the Lost Forty Fives, Rogers worked hard to close his musical achievement gap and eventually became the Forty-Five’s bass player. Always looking to stretch, Rogers jumped at the chance to play with The Skamatix which he characterized as ​“an incredible group of musicians.” The band’s feeling about Rogers is mutual, according to member Jim Berger: ​“Mike is rock-solid. He’s always right there and you always know where you are by listening to him.”

Mike’s wife Kim, is also a big fan of the band and supports him by being at every possible gig. She summed up the evening of the CD release party by rhetorically asking, ​“what could be better than Westville guys, playing in a Westville bar?”