Funk It’s Bear Creek Music Festival 2011 teaser video

As you can image, Bear Creek Music Festival was magical! The Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park was amazing, the artists were amazing, and the people were amazing (and my close friends know that I don’t use that word often).

The music park is perfect, all of the stages are very close together yet there is very little audio bleed through. The vibe is loose and open and everyone is there to party and have a great time. I met a ton of people and I have never seen soo many audio and video tapers in one place. I was very surprised by the amount of people shooting video on either video cameras or SLR cams with external mics. From what I hear, this is one of the only festivals that is a complete free for all as far as shooting video is concerned.

Needless to say, I was a wild man and I ended up shooting 14 hours of video over the course of 3 days. I could have done much more, but I ran out of space and had to borrow a memory card on the last night (thanks Bob!).

Over the next few months I will be featuring many of these videos here. For now, check out this teaser video to whet your appetite.

Funk It’s Bear Creek Music Festival 2011 teaser video:

Funk It’s Bear Creek Music Festival 2011 teaser video:
01. The Funky Meters – Cissy Strut
02. Marco Benevento Trio with Johnny Vidacovich – Junco Partner
03. The Trio: George Porter Jr, Johnny Vidacovich & Jennifer Hartswick with Freekbass – Don’t Be Squeezin’ My Heart
04. Jon Cleary’s Piano, Bass & Drums – Tipitina
05. Eric Krasno’s Chapter 2 – Nautilus
06. John Scofield’s Piety Street Band – unknown
07. Freekbass & Skerik – Improv in the Silent Disco
08. Dr. Klaw with Jamie McLean & Sam Kinninger – Higher Ground
09. Dr. Lonnie Smith Trio – unknown
10. Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey with Jonathan Lloyd, Chris Noonan, Mark Southerland & Skerik – The Burning
11. Orgone – Break In The Road
12. Medeski, Martin & Wood with Pee Wee Ellis – Where’s The Music?
13. The Lee Boys with Matt Grondin, Khris Royal, ?Shamarr Allen? & unknown trombonist – Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough
14. The New Mastersounds – Carrot Juice
15. Russell Batiste Band with George Porter Jr – Cissy Strut
16. The Coup – 5 Million Ways To Kill A CEO
17. Chali 2na Band – Get Focused
18. Snarky Puppy with Louis Cato – unknown
19. Garage A Trois – Rescue Spreaders
20. Medeski, Scofield, Martin & Wood – A Go Go
21. Anders Osborne, Eric Bolivar, Jamie McLean & George Porter Jr – Ya-Ya
22. Breakestra – unknown
23. Dumpstajam with Nigel Hall, Louis Cato, Eric Krasno, Freekbass & The Shady Horns – What Is Hip?
24. Lettuce – Sam Huff’s Flying Ragin’ Machine
25. Dumpstaphunk – Put It In The Dumpsta
26. Robert Walter, Eddie Roberts, Jamie McLean, Louis Cato & Ivan Neville – Standin’ On Shaky Ground

Roy Ayers live with Robert Glasper Experiment & Pete Rock

Roy Ayers, Peter Rock & The Robert Glasper Experiment – July 9, 2011 @ North Sea Jazz Festival – We Live In Brooklyn, Baby

This week I want to hip you to the Robert Glasper Experiment. This group has seamlessly melded jazz and hip hop like no one else. We’re talking about Robert Glasper on piano and fender rhodes, Chris “Daddy” Dave on drums, Derrick Hodge on bass and Casey Benjamin on sax and keytar/vocoder.

Roy Ayers is another artist that is known for melding genres by forever blurring the lines between jazz, funk and soul. So his pairing with the Robert Glasper Experiment at last summer’s North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands was only fitting.

It all started back in April of 2010 when Revive Music Group organized a Roy Ayers Tribute in Harlem that paired the Robert Glasper Experiment with legendary hip-hop producer and DJ, Pete Rock, and contemporary jazz vibraphonist, Stefon Harris. (Check All The Way Live’s exclusive audio recording.) It was also at this April 24, 2010 tribute show that Roy Ayers himself was presented with a Legends and Legacy Award and joined the group for a rendition of his hit, “Searching.” (See the videos here.)

The Roy Ayers Tribute was performed again by the Robert Glasper Experiment, Pete Rock & Stefon Harris on September 11, 2011 in Paris, France. At that show, Bilal joined the group for an expansive and mind-blowing version of “Everybody Loves The Sunshine”. (The full video is on youtube and mp3s are known to circulate of both this show and the Robert Glasper Trio‘s performance with Bilal from the next day.)

This brings us to July 9, 2011, when the Robert Glasper Experiment & Pete Rock threw it down again, this time at the North Sea Jazz Festival and with Roy Ayers receiving top billing. Here I present the full audio recording, 68 minutes long, mp3 format, sourced from the North Sea Jazz Festival web video stream: http://www.mediafire.com/?8fc9l3dsb4bxq3s. Also, part of the performance is available as a DVD download here.

Here is the full info to go along with that mp3:
Roy Ayers with Pete Rock & The Robert Glasper Experiment
July 9, 2011
Congo, Ahoy, Rotterdam, The Netherlands @ North Sea Jazz Festival
SBD > video webstream (unknown kbps) > Cool Edit Pro > WAV > MP3

01. unknown instrumental
Roy Ayers enters:
02. Everybody Loves The Sunshine
Pete Rock enters:
03. Don’t Stop The Feeling
04. We Live in Brooklyn, Baby
05. Pete Rock spins records
06. Don’t Stop The Feeling

Roy Ayers – vocals, vibraphone
Pete Rock – DJ
John Pressley – vocals & percussion
Raeford Gaskins – saxophone
Robert Glasper – piano
Derrick Hodge – bass
Chris Dave – drums
Casey Benjamin – saxophone & vocoder keytar

John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”, covered and funkifized

John Medeski, Skerik & Adam Deitch – A Love Supreme (John Coltrane cover)
August 13, 2011 Stratton, VT @ Royal Family Affair

To celebrate John Coltrane’s 85th birthday, I bring you two funkifized covers of Coltrane’s seminal recording with his “Classic Quartet”: “A Love Supreme.”

The first cover is a recent performance of a once-only band: John Medeski (of Medeski, Martin & Wood), Skerik (of Garage A Trois & The Dead Kenny Gs) and Adam Deitch (of Lettuce, Break Science & Eric Krasno’s Chapter 2). This one starts out very spacey until Deitch drops his hip-hop inflected beats, creating a wicked groove. The full recording of the show can downloaded at etree.

The second cover is from a 2002 performance by “Mike Clark & Friends.” Mike Clark is, of course, the legendary jazz-funk drummer that started out with Herbie Hancock & The Headhunters. Mike Clark’s “friends” on this occassion were Jessica Lurie (of Living Daylights) on sax and flute, as well as the core of Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey: Brian Haas on fender rhodes and Reed Matthis on bass.

This one is quite a journey. Of special note is the middle section (about 7.5 minutes in) in which Haas takes over the bass lines on the rhodes and Matthis begins to play the lead with his bass running through an octave pedal. They definitely take this piece to a place it’s never been before (or since).

Mike Clark & Friends – A Love Supreme (John Coltrane cover)
July 20, 2002 Oxford, OH @ Camp Buzz 9

Special thanks to Mike Wren for the use of his photos and Rob Clarke for the audio!

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