“. . . Out & About documents the Cap Gun Quartet at a handful of local appearances, marked by walking bass lines, art rock dynamics and a subtle sense of humor. Bassist Jeff Stringer composed most of the material on the disc. Highlights include the fuzz bass-driven ‘Get Mommy Get Daddy’ which gets loose in the middle and segues into the ballad ‘Did You Know,’ where Roger Dannenberg's trumpet gets the spotlight. Of special note is ‘Fire de Milo’ a hybrid of Jimi Hendrix's ‘Fire’ and ‘Venus De Milo’ from Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool album; it's a medley that manages to swing and rock. Drummer Rich Strong, who penned three of the songs, and keyboardist Victor Garzotto also shine throughout the album . . .” -- Mike Shanley, Pittsburgh Pulp

“. . . As a member of Water Shed 5tet, Jeff Stringer helped make Pittsburgh safe for just the sort of playfully eccentric avant-jazz you'll find on  Out and About, a 14-song introduction to Stringer's latest project, Cap Gun Quartet. 

Recorded live at the 31st Street Pub, the Quiet Storm and the Pittsburgh Deli Company, the album's highlights range from ‘Fire De Milo,’ on which the group combines Jimi Hendrix's ‘Fire’ and Miles Davis' ‘Venus De Milo’ to ‘March of the Baby Head,’ an opening track that instantly establishes the smile-inducing sense of personality with which they tend to color even their headiest moments of improvisational splendor. A nearly seven-minute track that leaves you wanting more, it begins with the drum roll they play at the start of movies from 20th Century Fox, then Stringer's bass line ambles in to weave its way around the punch-drunk percussion of drummer Rich Strong (of the Boilermaker Jazz Band) as keyboardist Victor Garzotto and trumpeter Roger Dannenberg do much to reinforce a mood suggestive of an art-house bank-heist caper. . . ”  --Ed Masley, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“. . . Pittsburgh’s Cap Gun Quartet makes the kind of naked, boundless jazz music that was exemplified by bassist (and bandleader) Jeff Stringer’s old group, Watershed 5tet. Unencumbered by the weight of jazz’s stricter segregations, Cap Gun melds together freely improvised, meandering solos from trumpeter Roger Dannenberg with prog-rock-influenced electric bass, jazzy piano and squonky synths by Victor Garzotto and full-time Boilermaker Jazz Man Rich Strong’s spelunking ker-plunking kit drumming. In other words, it’s free-hot-prog-jazz -- or maybe New Orleans-style swing-rock.

The 14 tracks here, recorded live around various Pittsburgh venues, have the jaunt and jokesterism of a live rock band. On ‘I Love Jesus (& You Should Too),’ for example, the band is only moderately successful in getting its audience to answer their shouts of ‘I love Jesus’ with ‘And you should too.’ Live is definitely the way to go for Cap Gun Quartet, as it allows songs such as ‘Get Mommy Get Daddy,’ with its heavily overdriven bass and bizarre breakdown, to have the same spirit as, and sit well next to, more traditional numbers like ‘Got-Cha,’ which could serve as the soundtrack to a ’70s Spanish Harlem-based detective’s TV show.

Between Stringer’s more quirky jazz-rock efforts -- which go from all-cylinders blasts to nearly ‘normal’ tunes such as ‘Secret Egg Hunt’ -- and Strong’s library-music influenced chase tunes (‘Got-Cha’; the spy-organ themed ‘Shake the Bag’), Cap Gun Quartet covers a lot of musical ground on Out & About. With no more production values than can be carried into the 31st Street Pub, the band has managed to capture all of that, thread it together and turn it into a solid, cohesive album of some of the most engaging -- and enjoyable -- avant-jazz-rock music out there . . . ” --Justin Hopper, Pittsburgh City Paper

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