Black Market Trust

The Black Market Trust is an American pop/vocal jazz band that combines the sounds of the great American crooners and vocal groups with the romantic Eastern European gypsy fire of jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. Consisting of five world class musicians who have traveled the globe recording and performing on the world’s biggest stages and with music’s most renowned artists, The Black Market Trust capitalize on their experience and pedigree to bring a new and exciting sound to audiences and listeners.

The band’s all-instrumental debut studio album, The Black Market Trust , is widely regarded as a milestone in the gypsy jazz world and lead guitarist, Jeffrey Scott Radaich, gained notoriety for his technical prowess and musicality. He has been touted as one of the most innovative and influential American acoustic gypsy jazz guitarists today. With their first release, the band established themselves as leaders and innovators by combining pop “Brill Building” ensibilities with the traditional sound of Django Reinhardt’s Hot Club of France Quintet. Their music has been featured in ABC TV’s comedy series “Happy Endings” and the animated video featuring their song Referential Integrity has garnered over one million YouTube views.

From 2009 to 2015 bassist Brian Netzley along with guitarist Radaich, were members of the groundbreaking Gonzalo Bergara Quartet and after spending 6 formative years as supporting cast members, Netzley and Radaich decided the time was right to focus on a new project that would stay true to their love of Django but combine it with a new sound and sensibility of the great pop and rock bands they grew up listening to and loving. Jeff and Brian recruited LA based session and touring drummer Brandon Laws and Nick Coventry, a Tucson, Arizona violin hero/Eastern European folk music expert. They then rounded out the lineup with wunderkind Kale Stiles, who plays rhythm guitar, clarinet and saxophone and even lap steel. In addition to the new musicians they also decided to add another new element to the Black Market Trust sound; Vocals…

Merging their love of everything from The Mills Brothers to The Beach Boys, Sinatra to Lennon/McCartney, the band began to arrange lead and 3 part vocal harmony lines to their favorite Great American Songbook standards. Using Radaich’s emotive, light baritone as the focus and surrounding it with Netzley’s pure tenor and Stiles’ rich bottom-end, the band began to melt two distinctly different vibes- one of a gypsy campfire, the other a slick metropolitan nightclub- into a cohesive, stylish sound. The Black Market Trust has organically created a new sound that is daring, fresh and exciting yet somehow still familiar and inviting. Combining old world romance with new world form, The Black Market Trust have crafted a simple, elegant and well-defined classic sound.