Greg Belzeski | Drums

Drums   |  Percussion   |   Vocals

A working musician — reliable for the show and for the music. A lot of styles, records and shows, and regular gigs.

Growing up in the Chicago area and then Houston, the radio always found its way to soul and funk, which Greg fell in love with early. With older sisters in the house who were performers themselves, he was pushed to sing, dance and perform for guests and neighbors as a kid.

He played and studied classical music and instruments at Boise State University on a full-ride music scholarship. His instructor was Dr. John Baldwin, who also served as president of the Percussive Arts Society.

Early in his career he loved, listened to, and played mostly jazz — big bands and small combos alike, from Dixie to modern jazz and fusion.

School was daytime; the evenings were gigs. In the early '80s that meant jams and dates with the great Gene Harris, four nights a week in the Manhattan Jazz Group behind Skeets Shaw — a veteran of the Debonaires, Tommy Dorsey and Red Nichols, and the mentor who taught him how to groove with a band and how music fits together — and off nights with Euphoria, pushing into avant-garde territory with Rob Kohler, Brent Jensen and others.

Two summers early on went to a poolside residency — Euphoria again, five hours a night, seven nights a week, weather permitting. A lot of the book got built there — standards, learned on the stand. He also spent a short stretch on the road with a touring band called Prodigy.

Two of those teachers went well past lessons. Ralph Humphrey — Frank Zappa's drummer and a first-call studio player — took him under his wing, and Greg would drive from Boise to Los Angeles, or wherever Humphrey was playing that week, to study with him.

Joe Raynor, Sinatra's drummer and about as respected as a player gets around Houston, taught at Brook Mays Music while Greg was working there. When Raynor had a few minutes free he'd say let's trade some eights, and the answer was always yes. They became friends. He handed over his books and showed Greg a great deal.

Most of the 1980s went to the road. First came the show band Shadz, including more than six months in South Korea playing major stages in jazz and pop — the band drew a following there, and for a stretch Greg was something close to a celebrity a long way from home.

Then Tahoe. He worked the showroom circuit and played Sundays in Big Tiny Little's band alongside George Rock, the trumpet player from Spike Jones' band, and Freddie Heinz.

A stint with Gina Eckstine — Billy Eckstine's daughter — followed, working San Diego and Las Vegas in a band with Mark Shapiro and Mark Lessman.

He landed after that in Oceanside, playing with bluegrass royalty: Billy Constable III, of the North Carolina Wiseman family, who came west with his family band. Progressive bluegrass, with drums.

The '90s kept the same pace: Roche, playing pop with a Latin and R&B flare; the Wind Machine big band; the Secret Agents; a stint at Hannah's; dates with Boink. Somewhere in there came shows and festivals with world music artist Toto Zara, then working Las Vegas and now based in Spain.

The early 2000s brought a five-year side project: Caliente, playing traditional Cuban and Puerto Rican music with Rolando Ortega out front alongside Mikel Bartol, Steve Goff and Terry Hill. Cuban dance contests, university stages and public shows, and a self-titled record to go with it.

Festivals run through all of it — Park City, the Gene Harris Jazz Festival, the Eagle Jazz Festival with Justin Nielsen and singer Farayi Malek, and plenty more — including a stretch with the original Onomatopoeia group, which worked the festival circuit.

Alongside all of it, he has held a chair in the orchestra when touring artists came through town — the Moody Blues, the Irish Tenors and others — and played the pit for Broadway-style productions in Boise. Reading work, on percussion.

Last year brought a pair of Montana dates behind Annalyse & Ryan — the touring husband-and-wife duo Annalyse McCoy and Ryan Dunn — on their Decades in Duet show: Beltstock, at the Castner Park rodeo grounds in Belt outside Great Falls, and a second night up in Fort Benton.

He knows what it's like to live on the road for literally years at a time. The through-line is steady work: mostly six and seven nights a week, from 1979 to now. The variety is the reason it never wore thin — that many styles, and boredom never got a chance.

STUDIED WITH:

MAIN INSTRUMENTS

STYLES PLAYED EXTENSIVELY

Most forms of jazz

Most styles of rock

R&B

Blues

Latin — Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Brazilian

Soul

Funk

New Orleans funk

New Orleans swing

Current pop, for the corporate bands

Country, traditional and modern

Country swing

Disco

Bluegrass (yes — progressive, with drums)

Pop

He has played metal too. He would not call himself a metal guy, but the gig got done.