Mike Essoudry's Mash Potato Mashers

But first came Mike Essoudry’s Mash Potato Mashers Parade, an Ottawa-based two-drum/six-brass ensemble who played not on the stage, but instead planted themselves at a different point in the crowd for each number, delivering fun, unamplified takes on genre-spanning songs. Think “Tom Waits-led Salvation Army Band meets Tower of Power.”
The band’s unorthadox live delivery mode was a little bizarre at first, it taking me a tune or two to realize that this was in fact the preceding act. Essoudry used a megaphone to announce the numbers as the musicians moved gypsy-style from pivot to pivot for each songs, scoring a big hit with the crowd.
They mixed just the right balance of humour with fitting song selections and musicianship to make it all engaging, finishing their set with a version of “Tennessee Waltz,” breaking in the middle for the band to sing the lyrics a cappella in a fight song style.
A mess of fun for an upbeat, lazy early evening. Thanks for the entertainment, guys!
- My Life — In Concert!: A Live Memoir, Past & Present

Have you ever wondered what it would sound like to have a brass band march across your living room? Listen to Mike Essoudry's brass ensemble and you'll find out. Much like a brass unit of pied pipers, they'll compel you to dance. Essoudry's group has been generating buzz in Ottawa's live music scene with their frenzied, energetic performances that see the nine-person group (plus occasional guests) march around venues, weaving in and out of audiences.
That same energy and spirit is captured on their debut album on tracks such as Influklezma, which starts with a haunting saxophone before transforming into a percussion-heavy boogie number, or A Tad Thad, which begins with a lurching trombone before the other brass members kick into a rollicking number that one can easily imagine hearing on Bourbon Street.
Essoudry leads the group, playing a myriad of percussion instruments -- from snare drum, symbols and tambourine to the slide whistle and kazoo -- and the rest of their rich sound is rounded out by trombones, trumpets, alto saxes, a bass drum and a sousaphone.
- Chris Lackner

It always surprises me,” Mike Essoudry muses as he considers the status of his Mash Potato Mashers, “that there aren’t more bands like this.”
He is referring to a band that comprises nine members: two trumpeters; two saxophonists; two trombonists; two percussionists; and a sousaphone player. Oh, and they march. Or, more accurately, they parade.
Forgive us if we do not share Essoudry’s bewilderment at such a lineup’s under-representation on the contemporary music scene.
But if the percussionist and his ensemble — among them Hilotron Mike Schultz, sax wiz Linsey Wellman and in-demand utility man Matt Ouimet — have the parade-band market cornered, they should hold their heads high. (Though they are advised to watch their step while parading.)
Particularly in light of the release of the categorization-defying self-titled CD that is cause for Friday’s celebration at Irene’s Pub. A delicious mix of boss brass and bold percussion, embracing everything from klezmer to country, Mike Essoudry’s Mash Potato Mashers sounds like nothing on the market.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, given the mobile musical machine’s roots.
“My wife and I went to the Montreal Jazz Festival a few years ago,” Essoudry recalls, “and they had a marching band from New Orleans kicking off each night. It was such a good time. And that later led me to klezmer and Balkan music. Then I saw some Brazilian groups marching…
“I decided I can’t lay claim to any one of those traditions. But I can lay claim to all of them.”
The resulting project is, again, like nothing you’ve heard before. Faint traces of Lester Bowie or New York’s Slavic Soul Party bubble under throughout the CD’s ten tracks. But the unifying factor is fun. So much fun, indeed, even the band cannot keep still.
“When people are dancing,” Essoudry explains, “we start strolling around and dancing too. You know, Ottawa is not known for dancers in bars. It should always be encouraged.”
Essoudry’s band will be doing just that Friday. And loving it. Certainly Essoudry, a man regularly seen at the back of the stage accompanying jazz vocalist Megan Jerome or The Back-Talk Organ Trio, is loving his opportunity to “get to be the rock star” for a change.
“I can have fun with this,” he enthuses. “I don’t have to be intellectual
“It’s a parade band. How serious can you actually be?”
- Allan Wigney