Submitted photoTurkuaz, a nine-piece funk band from New York, is serious about putting on an energetic show. "We like to keep the intensity pretty high the whole time. ThatÌs sort of one of the goals, to have it always be pretty intense and danceable," said lead guitarist Craig Brodhead.

Hey, Turkuaz! Why such prolificness?

Since it first performed here almost exactly a year ago, the nine-member funk band Turkuaz, of New York City, has released one full-length record, “Future 86,” which dropped last April.

On March 31, they’ll release an EP, “Stereochrome” and come September, they expect to have out another full-length album.

So again, we ask you, Turkuaz: Why such prolificness?

Lead guitarist and keyboardist Craig Brodhead can explain.

“I don’t know if it’s (prolificness) so much, or if it’s just that … when we’re out east, the (venues) are closer together. A lot of our fans travel to come see us, like, a good amount. We see a lot of the same faces, so we really feel a pressure to give them different stuff,” Brodhead said. “If they’re going to keep coming we want to make sure they get a different show.”

Turkuaz is “not huge or anything,” Brodhead added, but the band fills rooms in New York City, Boston, Baltimore, Providence, Rhode Island and Burlington, Vermont, among other East Coast cities. “People can drive from place to place there,” he said.

In the West, there’s a little less pressure.

“Not as many people travel, or maybe people aren’t as familiar with us,” Brodhead said, “but we get to kind of just play the hits” in places like Bend, where Turkuaz will perform Wednesday (see “If you go”).

The band started in Boston, where most of its members attended Berklee College of Music, Brodhead said. Singer-guitarist Dave Brandwein and bass player Taylor Shell were roommates.

“They would just kind of mess around and make demos with each other. Through the course of this one summer, they ended up making … their funk record,” Brodhead said. “They didn’t have a band or anything. They were just sort of doing it the two of them. Berklee has a record label that just tries to shine a light on bands in the Berklee community. Somebody submitted their record — they didn’t do it — and they won. And then … once you found a label, you had to do a show. So that’s kind of how the band started.”

Brandwein and Shell started putting together a band for that first show, including the horn section — Chris Brouwers (trumpet and keys), Greg Sanderson (tenor sax) and Josh Schwartz (baritone sax, vocals) — that’s in Turkuaz today.

The band is rounded out by drummer Michael Angelo Carubba and female vocalists Sammi Garett and Shira Elias. Brodhead, also a Berklee product, joined the group a couple years later, after they had moved their home base to New York.

Brodhead has been playing guitar since his pre-teens, and his musician dad also taught him how to play piano, he said.

Though not precisely raised on funk, “I liked things that were, like, funky. That’s an interesting thing about funk. No one in the band comes from a real tradition of being a funk musician or something like that. We were all kids from the suburbs who listened to rock music and the radio or whatever,” he said.

As listeners, Turkuaz had an appreciation for funk, but “learning the actual pure form of it is a different journey,” Brodhead said. “I think if you have good rhythm, it helps. I had pretty good rhythm, but Taylor, the bass player, is sort of my teacher. He just knows all the records and knows the history. He’s always putting on records, and I’m like, ‘What the hell is this?’ And he’s like, ‘You don’t know this one?’ Just from him putting stuff on, and talking about it, and listening, I absorbed a lot.”

Those lessons really began to sink in when Turkuaz started playing shows and festivals with early funk legends and watching them perform.

“I learned more from watching Bootsy Collins play than anything I’ve ever done,” Brodhead said. “That’s the cool thing. You start to rub elbows with the real dudes, you really pick it up.”

All that woodshedding has paid off in a high-energy live show, and Turkuaz brings enough bodies to the stage to make funk godfather (and leader of huge bands) George Clinton proud.

“It’s a nine-person band, so there’s just a lot of people on stage,” Brodhead said. “We like to keep the intensity pretty high the whole time. That’s sort of one of the goals, to have it always be pretty intense and danceable. And we have a light show! We (say) ‘We don’t do the show if it’s not the whole show.’ So we bring in our light rig. We set up every inch (of the stage). We have a ton of gear, and we just want to really put on a show for everybody.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0349, djasper@bendbulletin.com