I told you I was going to hip you to some funky music you wouldn’t otherwise run into! It’s Easter Sunday, so give this gospel music a chance. The Lee Boys are a Sacred Steel group in the style of Robert Randolph & The Family Band. Their chief asset is their pedal steel player, Roosevelt Collier. Just press play and enjoy, keeping in mind that the real heat begins around 7 minutes when Oteil brings a jaw-dropping scat bass solo.
About ten years ago I packed some friends in my car and drove up to Cincinnati, Ohio to see The Funky Meters perform. The festival was free and they performed during the daytime, down by the river. The situation was ripe for my old Sony Digital Hi8mm video camera to capture it all. Ten years later it’s still one of my favorite videos. I used an external microphone (the same mic I still use today) so the sound quality is great, despite being a little “hot” due to the extreme volume (I can’t believe I didn’t wear earplugs back then!).
Let’s begin with a band that you’ve probably heard me praising recently, Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk. These guys are the next generation of New Orleans funk, carrying on the torch from the (Funky) Meters. They’ve been constantly touring for the past 4+ years and have merged into a forceful funk unit to be reckoned with. The band includes Ivan Neville on B3 organ, clavinet and vocals, Ian Neville on rhythm guitar, Tony Hall on guitar, bass and vocals, Nick Daniels III on bass and vocals, and Raymond Weber on drums and vocals.
Every November for the past three years, Dumpstaphunk has descended upon the Bear Creek Music Festival in Live Oak, FL with the “DumpstaJam,” which has included many guests from Bernie Worrell to Eric Krasno (from Soulive) to Derek Trucks to Skerik and the Shady Horns. This year they were joined by George Porter Jr, Freekbass, Roosevelt Collier (from The Lee Boys), Joel Johnson (from Fred Wesley’s band), and a plethora of horn players.
The track I present to you includes Skerik and other horns players. It begins with Dumpstaphunk busting out an older original that they haven’t played much in the past year, Stinky, with only Skerik on sax. This segues into [@7min45sec] the deepest, brownest bass solo I’ve ever heard from Tony Hall, which then segues [around 10min52sec] into a full on rendition of Do That Stuff (a Parliament-Funkadelic cover) with a full horn section that is obviously well prepared for Fred Wesley’s triumphant horn arrangement. It’s unfortunate, however, that Fred Wesley himself didn’t join in on this performance, as he was an artist-at-large at the Festival this year.
In addition, here is a video of highlights from this DumpstaJam set: (this footage includes excerpts from Stinky > Do That Stuff, including the beginning of Tony’s monstrously low-toned bass solo, from 1min12sec to 2min49sec.
