High energy funk-jazz band Ghost-Note to rock Detroit Jazz Festival Sunday night
“It’s gonna be unapologetic funk. And it’s gonna be energetic. And it’s gonna be a wild ride, lots of high-energy solos and cool ensemble work.”
That’s how percussionist Nate Worth describes funk-jazz outfit Ghost-Note’s upcoming performance at this weekend's Detroit Jazz Festival.
Werth founded Ghost-Note in 2014 after several years with Grammy-winning jazz fusion sensation Snarky Puppy. Ghost-Note is touring the country on the heels of dropping their third album, “Mustard n’ Onions,” a wildly fun, funky sonic ride.
Werth said the album’s recording process was an unusual journey.
“In the summer of 2019, we were in between tours,” he said. “One of my friends has a home studio and a place where we can store our backline gear for touring the West Coast, so we’d always start in L.A. and end in L.A. The guys would come out three days early and go, ‘Let’s record this song I wrote,’ stuff like that, so everyone was writing on this record. We would have demos and would go into the studio and have a full song taught to us, section by section. We’d get it to the point where we felt good, and we’d do a full-band live track.
“That’s what I think was really special about the record. You’re getting everyone in a room at the same time, recording at the same time. And that’s something that, really surprisingly, people don’t realize is something of the past. A lot of music now is made (one instrument at a time, from separate locations). But for us, you know, you’d lost that energy.”
Between tours that year, the band crashed on air mattresses at the house with the studio.
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“The environment you have to imagine is kind of like a jazz frat house,” Werth said with a laugh. “We’re just a bunch of guys in the band, sleeping on the floors. And we’re cooking food — like, the horns will be talking through their parts and making dinner while the rhythm section is learning some chords. Our sax player is amazing on the grill, so he’s outside smoking chicken wings. Then it’s like, ‘All right, guys, come inside, we’re (recording) the take,” and he’s got his chef apron on and picks up his sax.
“We’re brothers. We love each other. And people, musician friends, are coming by because they want to see what’s up. Some of them, we’re like, ‘Get on the record!’”
In 2020, the band went into the studio again two weeks before a tour, and for two weeks after the tour ended. Two weeks after that, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world, but by that time, they’d recorded 36 tracks. Pandemic complications paused the work on the material, but the band is now back in full force.
“We love Detroit,” Werth said. “Every time we’re there.”
Ghost-Note will perform Sunday night from 9:15 - 10:30 p.m. on the Carhartt Amphitheater Stage during the Detroit Jazz Festival in Hart Plaza. Festival admission is free.
Contact Free Press arts and culture reporter Duante Beddingfield at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: High energy funk-jazz band Ghost-Note to rock Detroit Jazz Festival
