The Funky Meters – 4th of July in Louisville, Kentucky (VIDEO)

The Funky Meters were the featured performers at Louisville’s free annual Waterfront Independence Festival. Although they started over an hour late due to “technical difficulties,” it gave them the chance to play right through the fireworks display. It was quite an experience to see the fireworks display over the Ohio river while The Funky Meters ripped through Jimi Hendrix’s version of the Star Spangled Banner!

This featured video is a 26 minute edit of the set’s highlights, including the opening Cissy Strut, Chug-A-Lug, Africa, Doodle Oop (one of my favorite Meter’s tunes), The Star Spangled Banner, Fire On The Bayou, Just Kissed My Baby, and a blistering impromptu version of Jim Hendrix’s Purple Haze! Oh, and there are some fireworks on the video too…

I have to thank CMescia for sharing his audio recording (made with neumann mics) for this project. And i’d like to assure everyone that I will eventually get the full show posted as a DVD at thetradersden.org. For now, the full audio is available to download here: http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=546918.

Finally, a shout-out to Rex-A-Vision who couldn’t make it out this night. I guess he just had too much fun at the Electric Forest festival the day before…

Dr. Klaw – New Orleans Jazz Fest Late Night at One Eyed Jacks

IS IT JAZZ FEST YET?

Before I hit the road to New Orleans again for Jazz Fest (and hopefully bring back lots of videos), I have to post my most vivid memory from last year at Jazz Fest.

Dr. Klaw is another super group, but one that actually works. One half is Adam Deitch (Lettuce, Break Science) on drums & Eric Krasno (Soulive, Lettuce, Chapter 2) on guitar. The other half is Nick Daniels III (Dumpstaphunk, Hoodoo Allstars) on bass & vocals and Ian Neville (Dumpstaphunk, Funky Meters) on guitar. The glue in the middle is Nigel Hall (Lettuce, Chapter 2) on keys and vocals. They only play one or two shows each year, and usually only in New Orleans during Jazz Fest time. (FYI, this Friday I’ll be catching them play on the Creole Queen Riverboat, out on the Mississippi River…)

This particular show started around 2am, so Red Bull was essential. Luckily I had borrowed a set of mics and a recorder from a friend because there were no other tapers there to capture this for posterity. Or so I thought. It turns out that Nicholas Burlison got a SBD patch that night, so I had two sources to use to make a SBD matrix mix. This video was shot by mrtour1981, who graciously allowed me to drop my audio on top of his video and reshare it. You can listen to the full show here: http://www.archive.org/details/INevilleDumpstaphunk2010-05-01.drklaw-matrix.

Why is this my most vivid memory from last year’s trip? Because, during this night-ending encore of a beloved Meters tune, I ran up front, put my hands around her hips, and just kissed my baby.

7 Walkers in Lexington, KY 3/31/11 (VIDEO)

7 Walkers is a super group consisting of The Grateful Dead’s Bill Kreutzmann on drums, The Meters’ George Porter Jr on bass, Papa Mali on guitar, and Matt Hubbard on keys, trombone & harmonica. They perform not only classic Dead songs, but also a new batch of songs written by the Dead’s lyricist, Robert Hunter.

In the year and a half that they’ve been touring they have really started to gel as a band, and this 3 hour, 2 DVDR-DL set is a perfect example.

The full DVD download of this show is now available here: http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=90843

For a full review, see this article written by our resident photographer, Rex-A-Vision: http://www.honesttune.com/content/view/3152/29/

And here are some youtube clips: