In The News: A Half-Ton (And More) Of Soulful Talent

A few years back, five members of the Empire Statesmen Drum and Bugle Corps were putting together a new funk band and were tossing around ideas for a name. As founding member Brian King recalls, the trumpet and saxophone players together weighed some 1,000 pounds — and whenever one of them would toss out a name, trumpeter Jimmy Steele would add, “… and the Half Ton Horns!”

Steele’s joke turned out naming the band, which has expanded over the years to an 11-piece outfit playing a mix of funk, soul, rhythm & blues and pop for area festivals, parties, weddings, club gigs — and, just recently, the rarified heights of the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival.

Read the rest of the article here.