Tag: The Race Riot Suite

SKERIK, SKERIK, SKERIK! – 1 with Freekbass in the Silent Disco – 2 with Garage A Trois – 3 with Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey

Continuing the Bear Creek Music Festival video flood, we have 1 video of Skerik with Freekbass in the Silent Disco, 2 videos of Skerik with Garage A Trois, and 3 videos of Skerik with Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. How’s that for a christmas gift?

The Silent Disco is a new concept at music festivals, where everyone in the audience wears wireless headphones with a direct feed to the music. I caught a couple of DJs in the Silent Disco and it was really neat to take your headphones off and listen to the sounds people make.

Skerik & Freekbass, though, took it to another level. The sounds this duo made in my ears were stirring, exhilarating, and unique. Unfortunately these sounds will probably never be heard again, as I didn’t bring an audio recorder to get a SBD patch (fingers crossed that the soundguy or someone affiliated with the festival recorded it). You can check out this video, but you definitely won’t get the full experience. I guess I could have held the headphones up to my video camera’s external microphone and picked up some of it, but I didn’t think of it at the time…

Skerik & Freekbass in the Silent Disco 11/11/11 Bear Creek Music Festival:

Next up, two Garage A Trois videos. Just take Skerik, Mike Dillon, Stanton Moore, and Marco Benevento, put them in jumpsuits in 30 degree weather in the Florida swamp, and this is what happens.

Garage A Trois – Earl Harvin 11/11/11 Bear Creek Music Festival:

Garage A Trois – Rescue Spreaders 11/11/11 Bear Creek Music Festival:

Finally, we have Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey with a horn section of Skerik, Mark Southerland, Chris Noonan, & Jonathan Lloyd, performing the first 2 tracks from The Race Riot Suite.

Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey – Black Wall Street 11/11/11 Bear Creek Music Festival:

Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey – Black Wall Street (cont.) 11/11/11 Bear Creek Music Festival:

Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey – The Burning 11/11/11 Bear Creek Music Festival:

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!