SNARKY PUPPY

Snarky Puppy is a sonic road-trip in a supercharged all-terrain vehicle.

(you should really listen to this while you read)

A journey in which genres blur past you, massive and encompassing and changing constantly as you speed onwards to a distant horizon. The ride isn’t always comfortable and none of the maps you brought make sense, but you always end up somewhere you’ve never been before.

The Roseland Theater is on the large side of medium, often feeling more cramped than it should but delivering of great lighting and generally great sound. Thick, physics-defying support beams hold the ceiling up and block views seemingly wherever you stand, and tonight jam band fans defy stereotype in force, showing up early to claim the best real estate. I thread to the front-right and try to make my camera gear less obtrusive than it is.

When I arrive, Roosevelt Collier is busy setting fire to a lap steel with his fingers. The Miami native is so practiced at this art he has garnered the nickname “The Dr.” amongst the large network of musicians he regularly joins on stages around the world. His debut LP Exit 16 is self described as “dirty funk swampy grime” and really needs no other introduction. I take a few pictures but mostly stare in awe, and all too soon Roosevelt and his band leave the stage, smoldering, to let crew sweep the ashes. 

Equal parts music collective and touring jam band, Snarky Puppy appears live on stage with ten members on the evening of May 29th. They’re actually in shorter supply than I had anticipated - the group’s Wikipedia page has them at 19 members as of their latest album Immigrance, and they have had upwards of forty different players over the years. Three Grammys adorn the Snarky Puppy studio, won on three consecutive album releases, and a further two belong to members for their solo efforts. The hype has been earned. 

The show begins slowly with a swell of brass. Trumpet, tenor sax and alto take wing tenuously at first, but as their feathers begin to burn the rest of the band pounces on an odd meter and suddenly we’re in the jungle. Overlapping percussion creates dense pockets and sudden landslides. Guitar, bass, viola and a hardware store’s worth of synths trade solos so fluently it’s impossible to determine a single band leader. Up on the balcony a fat, be-sandled, silver-haired man rolls a cigarette while waving both hands in the air - this is clearly not his first safari.

So complete is the fusion of genres that the next hour of wildly progressive music feels like a single composition. Band members leave stage or sit down to let the music breathe, bubbles of funk rising to the surface amidst a walking baseline and a hail of rimshots. A Wurlitzer organ bathes us all in warm radiance before the keys player ignites the spark with some kind of metal slide guitar, it’s 3 foot long whammy bar shifting everything in the room down to its constituent atoms. Sax solos by moonlight and drum solos on the surface of an alien sun soothe and scathe respectively before all 10 players fall so quickly into a new groove that I have to blink. 

It takes some time for Michael League, bass player and voice on the mic, to get the crowd to calm the fuck down so he can spend 15 minutes introducing the band. They hail from every corner of the country - fitting given the focus of Immigrance - and it’s clear they’ve all slain the most fearsome stages to get here. 

“His birth certificate says Texas, but I’m pretty sure he comes from another fuckin’ planet, Bobby Sparks!” League finishes his introduction of the Hammond B3/clavinet/minimoog/keys player and his mammoth whammy bar. Before this last song, he instructs the right-crowd to clap in threes and the left-crowd to clap in fours within that beat. “It’s gonna feel weird,” he promises.

Xavi is the first single off the new album and my second favorite track by the band. Inspired by the Gnaoua World Music Festival  held in Morocco, the song slithers off-kilter between scarlet dunes and polyrhythms. We do our best to clap the parts on time, but mostly we revel in the sonic freedom this 10-man vessel has allowed us for the evening.

We scream. They bow. The band are careful not to disturb the thickly arrayed maze of instruments on their way out.

Check out Immigrance at the top. Bumps well with a jazz cigarette, a floral shirt and room to dance.

♥ Zach