The Smooth Jazz Alley

Official Biography

The Smooth Jazz Alley was formed by Guitarist Stan Evans & Keyboardist Marco Montoya, both San Francisco Bay Area natives. This duo's collaboration has been in the works for over a decade after the split up of the Latin fusion band Grupo Caribe, where they originally became longtime bandmates.

The project, Been A Long Time Comin'  was born out of simple jam sessions when Stan and Marco began jamming to funky smooth rhythms which led to their first recording, Stan’s Groove, originally recorded on an 8-Track Digital Recorder back in the early 2000's.  After a decade and four more versions came the final version that eventually made the album.  During that time their musical chemistry has greatly evolved and continues to grow as you will see on their album.  

Been A Long Time Comin'  features the impressive powerful bass work of KennyKen Franklin who has worked and toured around the world with well known artists such as Karen White, Jesse Johnson, & MC Hammer just to name a few. The extremely talented Miguel Melgoza, provides solid drums throughout most of the album and Eric Mendez provides drums and Latin percussion on the latin-soaked track, Christina, which also includes the smooth sounds of Latin Trumpeter Bill Ortega, Jr.  Also featured on the album are smooth vocalists Lawrence Beamen and Mona Attia on the R&B influenced track, Why.

The Smooth Jazz Alley can basically be summed as the answer to the argument that "there is so much smooth jazz to be experienced on so many levels that it is impossible to ignore the genre's mark on our music culture today", very well put by Ronald Jackson of www.thesmoothjazzride.com.