On Saturday, November 17th, Turkuaz closed out their extensive fall tour behind their new LP, Life In The City, with a performance at Chicago’s Park West featuring support from Andy Frasco & The U.N. While Turkuaz’s set was the evening’s main event, Andy Frasco & The U.N. got the colorful headliners involved in their opening performance, making for a particularly memorable show. Throughout their set, Andy Frasco gradually welcomed members of Turkuaz to the stage, beginning with vocalist Sammi Garett. However, instead of taking her familiar spot at the microphone, Garett hopped behind the drum kit to hold down the rhythm section for the instrument-swapping “Baby, Take The Day Off”.

Didn’t know Sammi Garett played the drums? Neither did we, but it turns out that’s where it all started for her. “Drums are my first instrument!” Garett tells Live For Live Music. “I grew up playing the drums and I was in the school band and played percussion. Marimba, timpani, marching band, all that fun stuff! And I actually enjoyed the marching band uniforms too! Ha! I was also in a ska band in high school and played drums in that and sang in the band. I really wanted to play the saxophone, but the band teacher said I was too short and just put me down to play the drums. I guess they needed to fill their one girl quota ha! But I couldn’t be happier with the way things turned out!”

Check out a clip of Garett’s sit-in with Andy Frasco & The U.N. below:

Sammi Garett Plays Drums with Andy Frasco & The U.N.

[Video: Thomas Glazier]

As the set went on, Frasco invited more and more members of Turkuaz to join in, including saxophonist Greg Sanderson, trumpeter/keyboardist Chris Brouwers, saxophonist/vocalist Josh Schwartz, bassist Taylor Shell, guitarist Craig Brodhead, and vocalist Shira Elias.

As Andy Frasco explains to Live For Live Music, “I wanted to showcase all the different angles on how multi-dimensional this group of musicians is… So when I interviewed Sammi for my podcast, I knew right there that the drums would be the first thing I wanted to conduct into our set to start introducing the Turkuaz squad. Then start bringing up the other guys to create more and more chaos.”

You can watch a full video of Andy Frasco & The U.N.’s set featuring members of Turkuaz below:

Andy Frasco & The U.N. ft. Members of Turkuaz – 11/17/18 – Full Video

[Video: IZEoftheWorld]

In addition to her work with Turkuaz, Garett recently collaborated with Freekbass on a batch of new material. Check out the video for their latest collaboration, “Love In Your Pocket“. You can see Sammi perform with Freekbass this weekend at Newport, KY’s The Southgate House Revival (11/23) and at Beckley, WV’s Melody’s (11/24). To grab your tickets, head here.

Next up for Turkuaz is a three-night late-December run culminating with their annual “The Ball Drop” New Year’s Eve celebration in Worcester, MA. For more information, head here.

Andy Frasco & The U.N. will, as always, continue to tour heavily throughout the end of 2018. For a list of their upcoming dates, head to the band’s website. You can also listen to the newest episode of Andy Frasco’s World Saving Podcast with Yeti featuring Sammi Garett and Shira Elias here.