‘Backs at Grounds for recording Event

The team of area jazz veterans, usually known as
The Silverbacks, is ready to start an extended home stand in Bowling Green.The
group Bowling Green residents Bob Manley, saxophones and flute, and Michael
Peslikis, piano, and John Johnson bass, Bob Rex, drums, and featured vocalist
Flo Metzger, will perform every Saturday night in February at Grounds for
Thought, 174 S. Main St., Bowling Green, in what the shop is billing as
"The Event."The shows, which all start at 8 p.m., will be recorded for
a future Grounds for Thought label release.The label has recorded national acts
Dwayne Dopsie and the Zydeco Hellraisers and The Kinsey Report. Like those
releases, the recording will be issued on vinyl with an accompanying CD.Grounds
proprietor Kelly Wicks said he decided he wanted to get some local talent on
wax, and this seemed a natural.Wicks said he’s a big fan of the group, which
plays regular Sunday evening sessions at the Village Idiot in Maumee.It was at
the Village Idiot, that Metzger, a long-time Toledo area songtress, first hooked
up with The Silverbacks.She’d known various members from other engagements and
so she decided to stop by the Idiot and sit in for a few numbers."The thing
about singing with The Silverbacks," she said, "is we kind of have a
chemistry between us. That’s what it takes between a singer and a small group,
something you can’t get with a big band."Though she’s coy about the
numbers, she allowed as she has four decades as a singer. Metzger, who sang with
the band at Grounds for Art Walk in April, started singing when she was a
youngster. She graduated to singing with combos around the area. She left the
stage to have children, and then went back to singing once they were grown.She’s
sung at the Toledo Yacht Club, local night spots and worked weddings as well as
with Ragtime Rick.For many years she was associated with the Choraliers in east
Toledo and directs her church choir at Bethel Lutheran in Toledo.She made one
CD, a recording that included the late Toledo jazz legend Jimmy Cook.And she’s
had the chance to sing with another Toledo master, pianist Claude Black at
Murphy’s Place as well as with pianist Johnny O’Neal, who portrayed Art Tatum in
the movie "Ray.""I’m just a blessed person to be able to do these
things, to be able to do something I love doing," Metzger said.She
concentrates on the great American standards – "Stardust,"
"Misty," "Ain’t She Sweet."When she was young, she said,
"I didn’t realize the meaning of the words." Now that meaning, the
message of the song, is what she concentrates on.She studied under the tutelage
of bandleader Fred Waring at choral workshops he sponsored in Pennsylvania. It
was Waring he told her: "Anyone can get up and sing a song, but to present
a song is entirely different."For Metzger: "A song has to mean
something to me before I sing it… I try to sing the song the way I feel it,
the way the words are portrayed, and I try to get the song over to people the
way I feel it, so they understand it."Working with the veterans such as
Peslikis, Manley, Johnson and Rex only makes that job easier.The band traces its
roots to the Black Swamp Arts Festival. In 2005 Manley had just returned to town
after years living away in Boston, Hawaii and more recently Cincinnati. Wicks
brought him on to open and he recruited a number of musicians he’d known from
the Welders and other groups. He returned the next year with Peslikis and
Johnson in a more jazz oriented outfit which he dubbed, tongue in cheek, The
Silverbacks. At the time he assumed this was most likely one-off gig. Instead it
has blossomed into a going concern that delivers its swinging jams framed by
Peslikis’ tight charts.Turns out there’s a band in California with named The
Silverbacks, so the name will be shelved for the recording project.What won’t be
shelved is the ‘Backs singular jazz sound and Metzger’s true-to-the-song vocals.