During the decade frontwoman N’Dea Davenport was separated from her band the Brand New Heavies, she claims not to have minded — or even much noticed — the string of female singers who supplanted her.
“I would not have maybe made certain decisions as far as certain types of people to replace me,” is the most Davenport will say, very carefully, about her successors. “I know there’s been a lot of conversation about my leaving and about the boys having different vocalists in the band. All that stuff doesn’t matter. … The most important thing is that we’re doing music together now, and we’re happy together.”
Maybe it’s because she has perspective, given the one searing tragedy she has endured in the meantime. After releasing a self-titled solo album in 1998, playing Lilith Fair and hanging around Europe, Davenport eventually moved to a New York City apartment. It was two blocks from the World Trade Center.
N’Dea survived the fall of the towers but spent a year recovering. “I’m so much stronger now by going through that experience,” she says. “I’m not even the same person I used to be. I was reborn after that experience. I had to chill for a while, but I’m back.”
So are the Heavies, who come to House of Blues on Thursday. And for those who remember how the group revolutionized jazz-funk a decade ago, the chance to see the reformed band will indeed prove sweet. The Heavies began life as a mostly instrumental acid jazz group from London. An American signed to the group’s label, Davenport heard the band was looking for a vocalist and thought, Why not? “I just volunteered, ‘Well, I’ll do it,’ and it took off from there,” recalls the singer, who had been working on a solo disc when she joined the Heavies. “We never really stopped. We just kept going and going and going, and no one had perspective on how it was supposed to go.”
During Davenport’s initial early ’90s reign, the group became an enduringly popular funk-soul hybrid with a few scattered hits (“Never Stop,” “Dream on Dreamer”) and a loyal club following. But she grew frustrated at being unable to finish her long-delayed solo album, concerned about the people with whom the Heavies surrounded themselves and besieged by the group’s internal politics. After the Heavies issued the 1994 disc “Brother Sister,” Davenport left.
“It’s the regular rock story,” she says. “There are so many people around you, pulling in a million different directions with their own agendas. It was just too much, too overwhelming. I needed to refuel my engine.”
After Davenport’s departure, the Heavies recruited several temporary frontwomen, including R&B singer Siedah Garrett. “I never was happy about it,” recalls Delicious Vinyl head Michael Ross, who signed the group in their early, pre-Davenport incarnation and claims to have brokered their recent peace accord. “The Heavies were just getting on a roll when N’Dea wanted to start pursuing a solo career. From a songwriting perspective [the change of singers] worked well, but from a live perspective it was never the same.”
Davenport and the Heavies had made tentative moves toward a rapprochement in the summer of 2001; four years later, they reunited for good. Their first day back together, “we met in New York City, around a huge table. It felt fine,” Davenport says. “The guys told me they were a little nervous. I don’t know why I wasn’t nervous. … It was just like old times. After a while, it seemed like nothing had changed.”
Last year, the Heavies released a reunion disc on Delicious Vinyl, “Get Used To It” (to be followed by an upcoming remix EP, “Let’s Do It Again”). Davenport, torn by conflicting loyalties during her first go-round, swears the Brand New Heavies are her only priority.
“It’s almost like you lost one of yours shoes, and then you found it somewhere and you put them back on and you’re like, ‘I remember these shoes! They look good on my feet.'”
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ctc-tempo@tribune.com
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Brand New Heavies (opening for Macy Gray)
When: 8:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn St.
Tickets: $46.50-$48 (18+); 312-923-2000
