David Fiuczynski’s KiF 3/27/26 Firehouse 12

 David “FuZe” Fiuczynski is a downtown guitarist who cut his teeth on the maelstrom melting pot of the 90s Knitting Factory scene. Bending jazz, rock, improv, and prog to their polyglot notions of music was fascinating to watch as a young musical omnivore. FuZe starts the evening by explaining the KiF project. He was tapped to go to Morocco and play at a festival where he was part of a backing band for 40 local groups. Vocal groups, odd instruments, microtonal playing, proved to be mind blowing and challenging. Many musicians approached him to say “did you know that Hendrix stayed and performed here?” While he was not familiar with that part of Jimi’s life, he could not help but notice the impact the master made on these foreign musicians. What then if Hendrix was alive and moved forward with his love of this music, KiF and essentially rocking the casbah was formed. Dave plays the most unique guitar. Double-necked, double stringed, it’s essentially a small guitar fused to a normal sized one. With the addition of effects pedals, he could change the sound at will. He would play a passage on one, then seamlessly jump to the other, made me want to chat him up about Hendrix. He was joined this evening by a young asian woman on keys, six string (maybe fretless?) bass, and drums. The odd sounds and tunings from Dave were perfectly matched by the keyboards. One portion had the keys melodica sounding and Dave’s microtonal slurring transporting the listener to Marrakech. The rhythm section was tight, with the bass looking for a  jamband workout. The players were probably students of Dave, he heads up the MicroJam Institute for advanced microtonal studies at Berklee. The first set at the Firehouse had a nice near capacity crowd to see this master. The group rolls through some originals before jumping in to a King Gizzard and then a Mononeon cover.  Dave has passages that sound like Jean Luc Ponty followed by Zappa-esque runs. Closed with two jams Friday Night Prayer Meeting and Macro Magnificat. Glad to have the Firehouse back for the spring season.