Nearly every Wednesday night for the past year and a half, Fluorescent Brown has filled Colonel Black’s with their signature flavor of improvised downtempo electronica. Fluorescent Brown is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill bar band. Most live shows consist of sets that the musicians have painstakingly rehearsed, but the men of Florescent Brown take stage knowing only that they can trust one another to make some unforgettable music. The melding of talent, combined with years of friendship allows FloBro to play a different set with a broad range of variety in genre and sound.

In the beginning, there were only two members: Joe Kirchner and Drew Fleming started off in the DJ booth but after adding John Sanders, Jesse Barney, DJ Callum Bethune and a revolving troupe of Bozeman’s finest guest musicians, the group expanded into the area near the fireplace. Many of the bar patrons that make up the audience have no idea that what they’re listening to has never before been heard, even by the people making the sounds. Most people don’t realize right away that what their hearing is improvised, which is the ultimate goal of the band.

“The idea is to lay down a live band backdrop of grooves that aren’t too intrusive. You can still carry a conversation while we perform, which makes for a heightened level of sensitivity between the musicians. It’s dynamically different than any gig I’ve played, and poignant when everything  is improv…” Said pianist, Kirchner.

“It’s about the most challenging thing you can do as a musician, playing improv in front of an audience for three plus hours and having them like it,” said Jesse Barney.

While breaking musical ground, the group does it for the love of the music, the freedom and discovery of improvisation, and the fun that comes from spending time with one another.

“There are so many musical jokes,” said Barney, “There are times when we start laughing at something that was done musically, and no one will have any idea what happened.”

Join Fluorescent Brown’s growing fan base on Wednesday nights at Colonel Black’s (321 E Main St) for $4 Moscow Mules and funky improvisational downtempo.