Longtime Friends to Play 'Harmonious' R&B B-Sides

Ed Alstrom, a Montville resident, and the Harmonious 5 will be playing their first Montville Summer Concert performance on Thursday at the Community Park Amphitheater.

When Alstrom and his longtime friends Dave Keyes, on piano, Mark Berger, on bass, and Frank Pagano, on drums, take the stage for their first Montville show, the audience can expect a lot of surprises. 

“The band will be playing a lot of songs that weren’t huge radio hits,” Alstrom said. “We’re not your garden-variety act that plays nothing but mega-hit after mega-hit; we try to focus on the lesser-known stuff, with lyrics that are usually witty and kooky.”

Although audience members might not be able to identify the name of a song or the group, Alstrom is confident that everyone will appreciate the music.

“People are going to recognize what we play, whether it sounds familiar or they remember the artist, but they might not know the lyrics,” Alstrom said.  “We try to play selections that aren’t normally chosen from an artist.”

When the band formed, Alstrom and his friends weren’t looking to educate people in music. 

“All of us are really long-time friends, and have played together in all conceivable contexts,” Alstrom said.  “So when I wanted to start a group harmony R&B project, a real passion of mine, these are the people I went to first.  I needed to find a group of musicians who could play and sing complex harmonies.”

The friendship for Alstrom and the Harmonious 5 began shortly after high school, when Alstrom and Tagano met.  Shortly after, Alstrom would meet the other members of the band, and the rest, as they say, is rock and roll history.

Alstrom said the group's size allows it to play in a wide variety of venues, including The Trumpets in Montclair, The Robin’s Nest in Linden and other bar venues. However, that doesn’t mean that any of them are quitting their day jobs. Berger is an audio transfer technician, which means he transfers audio tracks to digital recordings. Keyes and Pagano work on Broadway as gig musicians, and Alstrom is a multi-hyphenate worker in music as a church-worker/organ player at Yankee Stadium, and other projects.

Ed Alstrom and the Harmonious 5 are working on a CD.

“The band has a finished CD that we are waiting to get into production,” Alstrom said.  “Hopefully, it [the CD] will be finished by the end of the summer, early fall.”

The CD will feature all of the songs that the band will play at the Summer Concert Series, plus some more. One of the bands the group covers is The Five Royales, a band that Alstrom feels never got the recognition they deserved.           

“The Five Royales are one of the most amazing harmony R&B outfits that ever existed,” Alstrom said.  “They didn’t have any hits, so people generally don’t  know who they are.  What we try to do is take music like this, update it a bit, and hope that we can introduce some great work to the audience.”

Ed Alstrom and the Harmonious 5 will be performing on Thursday from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at the Montville Ampitheater.