From Busking In The Subway To Recording With Queen Bey

Too Many Zooz began as three busking virtuosos in the New York Subway - their trademark "brass house" fusing jazz with hip hop and EDM structures. But the zany party troupe have since recorded, and performed, with Beyonce. And, today, they're in-demand on the international live circuit.

This month, Leo Pellegrino (baritone saxophone), Matt Doe (trumpet) and David "King of Sludge" Parks (drums) will visit Australia for the second time in a matter of months. Indeed, they first toured in November, hitting the Mullum and Queenscliff Music Festivals. Pellegrino was especially intrigued by the former in Mullumbimby, NSW. "The town was so small," he says. "I've just never been to a tiny kinda place, you know? I'm used to bigger cities. So it was very interesting." Too Many Zooz also paid tribute to the late AC/DC rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, performing the band's TNT in Melbourne's ACDC Lane. "I didn't even know that AC/DC was Australian until recently!" Pellegrino confesses.

Pellegrino could be the world's coolest saxophonist - cutting a striking figure with his flamboyantly coloured locks, tattoos and rave dance moves. Bizarrely, in the '90s there was a sax backlash, possibly because it was associated with Kenny G's cheesy listening. "It kind of went out of style with jazz - just because it was thought of as a jazz instrument and, as jazz went out of style, it did also." The instrument made a resurgence partly because of house music.

Pellegrino met his Too Many Zooz cohorts through their connections to the Manhattan School of Music. In 2013 the friends decided to busk in NY's Subway stations "to try and make a little bit of money at first". Says Pellegrino, "It was a good job, as far as getting recognition and seeing thousands of people every day. It was like a little gig for us. And it became a big thing."

The hipsters played what Parks termed "brass house" - hybridising urban, trap, trop house, Caribbean music and jazz. Like that other famous busker Ed Sheeran (!), Too Many Zooz generated momentum on the back of internet footage. By 2015, they were headlining traditional venues. This necessitated that Too Many Zooz approach sets differently. "It's a very different situation. I mean, in the Subway, the thing is everyone is passing by constantly, so you're kind of jamming out and playing the same stuff and no one really is a critic to the music - as opposed to when you're playing in bars and clubs, you have to entertain people for an hour-and-a-half. So it's a different scenario. You have to change it up and make it more interesting and have more ups and downs."

Incredibly, Beyonce's camp contacted Too Many Zooz to work on Lemonade's country song, Daddy Lessons. The band later accompanied her and the Dixie Chicks at the 2016 Country Music Association Awards in Nashville - a symbolic cross-exchange, marred by reactionary (and racist) country fans on social media. "It was incredible - it was a great experience," Pellegrino says of their dealings with Queen Bey. "Beyonce was really cool and nice and she just had a great vibe about her. Everyone we worked with was very professional. It was a really awesome experience. I had a great time. It's something I'll remember for the rest of my life."

In 2016, Too Many Zooz followed a succession of EPs with their debut album, Subway Gawdz, funded by a Kickstarter campaign. The track Warriors was synced for a Google Pixel 2 ad. The posse have amassed fresh material. Studio time allows them to experiment, Pellegrino says. "We're just trying a bunch of new things. We're trying a bunch of new styles. Sometimes we'll take a track we really like and we'll be like, 'Let's try and make a track just like this' - whether it's a hip hop genre or something more EDM or whatever. We're just trying constantly different things; different instruments."

Pellegrino spruiks the Too Many Zooz live show as "high energy". "The best way to describe it is a combination between a DJ set and a jazz trio - all the excitement and drops of electronic music and a DJ, but with the live, organic experience of improvisational jazz."

So what's next for Too Many Zooz? "As of now, we're just doing a lot of touring and recording a lot and taking as many opportunities as we can - take it day-by-day and kind of riding the wave; just letting the tide take us in and doing as much as we can, to further our career in music."