The Paul Abella Trio

Audiences come to see The Paul Abella Trio when they want to have a good time. We deliver a high energy set that, depending on the situation, might include covers of music from Paula Abdul, Fugazi, The Meters, Nine Inch Nails or The Grateful Dead. Our instrumentation (guitar/bass/cajon, or guitar/vibes/bass/cajon) demands that we sound different and that we stand out. That instrumentation also means that we can keep it quiet when need be, and especially in our trio formation, we have a very small footprint.

This is the space where artists list their pedigrees. The Paul Abella Trio is the mutt of the Chicago Jazz scene. And like many mutts, we're loveable, fun, nobody has once worried about us being inbred.

The Paul Abella Trio fuses Pop melodies, Jazz harmonies, Brazilian, Afro-Cuban and Funk rhythms, jammy improvisations and Punk attitude.

We sound like little else. Sometimes we're a trio. More and more often, we're a quartet. But since we already paid for a website, we're sticking with the name.

Jazz guys think we're a jam band. Jam Band fanatics think we're a Jazz group.

Billy Denk plays the guitar and writes some tunes. Chris Bernhardt plays the bass. Preyas Roy joins us on the vibes whenever we can make it happen. Paul Abella books the gigs and sits on a box.

we don't need much. we're self-sustaining. We just need a power outlet nearby to plug in two amps in a small setting, and three amps in a larger setting without house sound.