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Band Bios |
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Charlie Escher plays fretless bass, slide bass, guitar, guitar synth, and vocalizes. He’s played in a variety of hippie jam bands since the early ‘70s, as well as forays into bluegrass, fusion, traditional jazz, and lots of uncategorizable stuff. Living in Seattle during the mid-eighties, he played bass in a very popular jam band, The Raging Maggots. In his day job as an electronics technician, he’s worked with pro audio equipment of every sort for 30 years or so, specializing in tube guitar amps and synthesizers. He’s also worked onstage mixing or teching for a huge variety of acts, including The Allman Brothers Band, Jimmy Cliff, Bo Diddley, Canned Heat, Tony Furtado, Hanuman, and many more. His passion for windsurfing brought him to the Columbia Gorge in 1989. He was at one time a US record holder in speed sailing, but now takes a more relaxed attitude to the sport. He still mixes live club shows occasionally, and sits in on bass with lots of local acts from time to time.
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Omar Sankari took up drums at an early age, learning from his uncle, a professional who played some of the same clubs that Passing Wind now appears at. Omar played in his high school big band, then worked his way through college playing in cover bands in Seattle. He now teaches high school English, after a long career working as a forest ranger and firefighter. He has two children, Pico and Silva, and his lovely wife Wanda is an accomplished violinist. She’s too smart to play with Passing Wind, of course. Omar enjoys windsurfing too, but prefers the laid back scene and gentler winds of Baja, rather than the intense, adrenaline-pumping Gorge circus. |
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Omar and Charlie started playing together around 1991, and have played with a number of different third band members over the years. The duo format seems to allow the greatest improvisational freedom, so they’ve been using that format exclusively for the last few years. Passing Wind invokes the influences of Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, Shagnia Twain, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Tom Waits, and, according to nearly everyone who sees them play, Frank Zappa. |
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