Mac Gollehon

World-renowned NYC trumpet assassin MAC GOLLEHON has toured the planet and recorded in studios everywhere with an endless roster of rock, pop, and jazz artists since the 1970s, including David Bowie, Blondie, Onyx, Madonna, Billy Ocean, Hall & Oates, Chaka Khan, Buddy Rich, Al Jarreau, Sheena Easton, Nile Rodgers, Patrick Adams, Mick Jagger, Grace Jones, Hector Lavoe, and hundreds of others, including his decade-plus run in Duran Duran. In addition to the Herculean amount of session work, GOLLEHON has released a variety of solo albums since the late 1990s, including records with his ever-morphing MAC GOLLEHON & THE HISPANIC MECHANICS.

Anybody who has heard Billy Ocean’s “Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car,” Blondie’s The Hunter, or Onyx’s Slam is well versed in the wide array of brass tactics of New York City-based MAC GOLLEHON, as proven on the well-over two-hundred gold and platinum albums on which the trumpeter has appeared. But GOLLEHON’s exploratory nature led him further from the mainstream path and into the more outre realms of the audio matrix, in recent years collaborating with extreme/experimental solo outfit Gridfailure, In May of 2021, Nefarious Industries released the pair’s Dismemberment Cabaret fully collaborative album; a savage hybrid of industrialized dark hardcore/dark ambient experimental metal rooted in slasher gore and underworld speakeasys, recorded remotely while under Covid quarantine. Upon completion of the record, GOLLEHON and Gridfailure’s David Brenner had already identified several new project ideas to explore, the next of which was embodied in the 2022 LP The End Is the Beginning.

The new MAC GOLLEHON & THE HISPANIC MECHANICS LP, Bite of the Street is an explosive, dance-friendly, groove-saturated party album that slams both feet to the gas pedal from its opening notes and never lets up. Fusing heavy soul and jazz with Latin dance grooves, synth-drenched dirges, a multi-percussionist assault, and more energy than a supernova, the six movements showcase GOLLEHON’s searing brass attack, with stacks of layered and intertwined trumpet igniting every moment of the album.

Recorded before the Covid pandemic, Bite of the Street was fully written and arranged by GOLLEHON, and sees him performing trumpet, keyboards, and scat vocals. He’s joined by Eric Klaastad on bass, Jeanne Carno on drums, and Ismael Sanchez performing additional percussion. Engineer Adan Perez supplies additional keyboards on “Coming At You,” Ariel Lawler supplies background vocals on “Sleepwalker,” and David Brenner provides sound effects on “Souled Out.”

Bite of the Street was recorded and engineered by Adan Perez (Ruben Blades, Marc Anthony, Romeo Santos, Dave Valentin, Tito Nieves, Giovanni Hidalgo) at Allerton Studio in the Bronx, and Dan Grigsby (Joe Cocker, Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, Sting, Kool & The Gang, Keith Richards) at SAE Institute of Technology in Manhattan, and mixed and mastered by Bruce A. Miller (Miles Davis, Rascal Flatts, Aretha Franklin, Mary J Blige, Mariah Carey, Rod Stewart). The record is completed with photography by Tyler Adams, and layout/design by David Brenner and Greg Meisenberg.