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Sweetwater 420 Fest celebrates the two-decade mark this year, staying true to its roots with a fan-first experience that blends music, tasty beers, art, environmental awareness, and good vibes. I’ve been at most of the past 19 Sweetwater 420 Fests ranging from it’s days at Candler Park to the massive Centennial Park years. I attended last year’s event at Pullman Yards and got a taste for the newest era. This year’s 3-day fest has a solid lineup leaning towards bluegrass. blues and funk with a bit of everything in between. The daily lineups are solid from top to bottom soContinue Reading

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Bear Creek 2010 was my initiation into the new era of music festivals. For anyone that doesn’t know, that annual November festival based at the gorgeous Spirit of Suwannee Music Park (SOSMP), was renowned for it’s smaller, family-feel and specialized in jam and funk music across 5 or 6 stages including inside at the music hall. Bear Creek had an eight year run from 2007-2014. The 2010 schedule caught my eye because I had been looking for places to see Maceo Parker (James Brown, Parliament/Funkadelic) and funk band, Lettuce, that I was a fan of but had never seen beforeContinue Reading

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GroundUP Music Festival is back at the Miami Beach Bandshell in 2025 in a different but packed and stacked, star-studded lineup.  The Bandshell facility has been undergoing construction required a new, more intimate festival setting. The main stage area will also include a stage at the back of the bandshell for the bands so there will be minimal walking and maximum continuous music. If you’re reading this, you probably already know about the 5-time Grammy winning host band, Snarky Puppy. This will be the eighth GUMF event and I’m so excited for this 2-day program. In fact, we’ll get moreContinue Reading

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Here’s my 1st ever annual video recap of 29 live sets that I recorded this year. This is a sampling of the more than 80 videos I posted on YouTube this year, which is a subset of the videos that I recorded (some are not public), which is yet a further subset of the sets that I’ve actually seen or heard this year (since I don’t record every set). The videos are notable in one way or another, perhaps based on the quality of the recording, the circumstances of the recording or the uniqueness of the set. I’ll give aContinue Reading

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2024 was a great one for recorded funk, jazz, soul and world music. This article covers the wide range of albums I enjoyed during the year from some perennial favorites like The New Mastersounds, Ghost-Note, Kamasi Washington, Lotus and The Greyboy Allstars to new and new-to-me artists like Diggin’ Dirt, Tatiana Eva-Marie and Kinga Glyk. These are the albums that I listened to the most – I wish I could include all the great albums that were shared with me during the course of the year — hopefully my coverage will increase in 2025. If you like what you read,Continue Reading

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Imola Vida-Veres is a new artist and she’s got an exquisite voice and compositional chops. She sings in both Hungarian and English, naturally with a slight, but charming accent reminiscent of the fabulous Polish songstress, Basia from the 1980s. Imola’s got an airiness to her vocals that can go from a gentle wind to full gusts pretty quickly showing both grace and power. The accompanying musicians are all locked in and include several Hungarian string players as well as GroundUP/Snarky Puppy stalwarts Bob Lanzetti, Keita Ogawa, Marcelo Woloski, Bobby Sparks and André Ferrari (Bokanté). Nic Hard, Snarky’s long term soundContinue Reading

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The Setup LA LOM Band popped onto my radar a couple of weeks before their early December show at Terminal West in hometown Atlanta. They’re somewhat in the group of trendy newish bands that play some good old fashioned music, kind of retro new. Almost all of my favorite artists pay homage in some way to old school legends. Examples that come to mind are The New Mastersounds and The Meters or Lettuce and EWF and ToP. More recently bands like Lawrence, Couch, The Dip, The True Loves, Durand Jones and The Indications, Thee Sinseers  and several more play withContinue Reading

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Bear Creek 2010 was my initiation into the new era of music festivals. For anyone that doesn’t know, that annual November festival based at the gorgeous Spirit of Suwannee Music Park (SOSMP), was renowned for it’s smaller, family-feel and specialized in jam and funk music across 5 or 6 stages including inside at the music hall. Bear Creek had an eight year run from 2007-2014. The 2010 schedule caught my eye because I had been looking for places to see Maceo Parker (James Brown, Parliament/Funkadelic) and funk band, Lettuce, that I was a fan of but had never seen beforeContinue Reading

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Every Greyboy Allstars album release is a time to celebrate and I’m loving listening to all the gifts in Grab Bag: 2007 – 2023. It’s an eclectic mix of songs that the band had played life but never recorded over the last several years. In that sense, and because of the warmth and style of the album, it feels gorgeously familiar. It’s a testament to the collective experience of the group as bandmates and as craftsmen with other artists. The five fit together seamlessly and they weave in and out of the tunes with adroitness.  This absolutely hits the sweetContinue Reading

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Electric Kif is one of the leading funk fusion foursomes of the early 21st century and, I believe, have the gravitas to be among those bands that are listened to for decades, as their predecessors, Weather Report and Return to Forever have been. That’s a lofty statement, for sure, but the textures and contours of their tunes merit such praise and ReThink is a marvelous addition to their portfolio as the sixth studio album.   Buy or Stream ReThink(click on image) The band has been around for nearly 15 years and in the current configuration for more than 10.  They’veContinue Reading