Ronnie Neuhauser - Guitar, director of stage antics, and characters with malcontendencies

Ronnie Neuhauser

Composer/guitarist Ronnie Neuhauser began his first musical project Grooveyard in the early 1990’s. The band had 3 releases, “Grooveyard,” “Bruthas and Sistas,” and “The Beastly Funk Knuckle.” Wanting to venture out much further musically than the other members he turned his sites on what would be the musical projects he is now working on. The first project the “Congregation Against Styrocultural Brain Damage” was a studio project.

The writing for that began in 1996 but because of funding and many other issues the project was stretched out over 3 years. Once released his jazz rock fusion composition “Dr. Sus” won first prize at The Mid Atlantic Song Contest” in 1999. At this time Ronnie decided to set a course for self sufficiency, slowly building his own studio “The Center For Free Thought.” Ronnie also received a Preston Foundation Grant for performing the CASBD as an avant garde rock opera but the performances never came to fruition. “The band for the rock opera did not do their homework (even though they were paid) and I wasn’t going to present my work unless it was done with the vision intended.”

After this is when Ronnie’s projects started to come together. Act four “Styrocultural Antidote” which is the all instrumental section of the CASBD CD, became the title and seeds for his new project. Styrocultural Antidote released its first CD “Sweat Hog” in 2003. A slew of releases followed, a Styrocultural Antidote live DVD and CD and the 2004 DVD based on and including performances from Margaret Holloway, a.k.a. “The Shakespeare Lady.” Ronnie wrote this composition for Margaret who is a homeless woman who achieved a BA from Bennington College, and an MA from the Yale School of Drama who became homeless from being stricken with a rare form of schizophrenia.

Styrocultural Antidote ventured out artistically with the completely improvised 2005 CD entitled “Observing Life Through Traffic.” From 2001 to 2007 the band performed with four different line ups until the current fifth line up was set in 2007 with new drummer Jeremy Shulick and bassist since 2004 Fred Melillo. With Styrocultural Antidote being a fairly steady entity Ronnie had been working to put the “Congregation Against Styrocultural Brain Damage” together for recording and performances. The band performed under that name for a short time until the name was changed to No Cheez Orchestra because “People in the current culture can’t deal with a title of such magnitude.”

The next CD “War and Pom Poms” released in 2006. Currently Ronnie is working on a slew of new CD’s for both projects for 2008 including the just released Styrocultural Antidote CD “Stupid Like Cow” which has wonderful/stretching material recorded from 2002, 2003 and some additions in 2008.

Their latest is a Styrocultural DVD documenting 3 line-ups and another CD entitled “Ballet of The Elephant” which includes some microtonal works. No Cheez Orchestra has two new CD’s slated for 2008, and early 2009 entitled “Mummarts and Boggarts” and “Gangr’ear.” Ronnie hopes to mount his eclectic modern opera “Simplex One.” He hopes to keep working and stretching boundaries with all the wonderful musicians he currently works with. For some years Ronnie’s work on his duple scale theory and many compositional concepts which have seeped in earlier projects are becoming evident in more current and soon to be released projects.

“The goal is to keep moving forward, stretching boundaries and breaking away from norms. It’s a conceptual building that has no height restrictions and though I believe we should work to continue adding floors we always travel all the floors never forgetting where we have come from. This adds depth, or layers, basically deep meaning to the work”