My Hidden Funk Band Agenda

I've been playing with Collective Pursuit for about 6 months now have a secret agenda to turn it into my new funk band. That's not to say it will replace my trio, but I'm starting to do more writing for the larger ensemble along with arranging many of my trio tunes for the group.

When I was in Indiana, I had a similar group which recorded in 2004. Those recordings make up most of my first album. I've pulled out several of those tunes and updated them for the group so far. The rest of the tunes on that album are with my old trio, which at the time was guitar/bass/drums. Those were more straight ahead jazz tunes.

I love the energy of a larger funk band, with poppin' horns and a deep bass groove. But upon moving to NYC, my plans of reforming the funk band met with the daunting reality of organizing the group (many props to Katie Chauvot for organizing and running Collective Pursuit for doing just that). So I ended up putting a trio together and for the love of funk, re-arranged some of my charts for the trio.

Then I got around to writing strictly for the trio, and that's how Life Is Loud was born. I've grown to love playing jazz/funk in my trio. There's fewer lines of communication and therefore fewer boundaries while improvising. When the tune abandons the ink, it's generally a sign things are taking off, not crashing because half the band is lost.

But after writing some funky new jams with James Brown inspired horn lines for Collective Pursuit, I remember why I went to all that trouble to organize the funk band in Indiana. I have definite plans to release a new trio album in 2009, but who knows, maybe I'll be adding a straight up funk record to the agenda as well.

To find out when Collective Pursuit is playing, check my calendar.