Back to it with Soul Supreme and a funky Azymuth cut he picked from the 1973-75 demo volumes. The great Ivan “Mamão” Conti (this one gave me trouble ) & Azymuth – thank you!

Cover: “Electric Frog”  by Kool and the Gang (w/ the illustrious Soul Supreme)

On my favorite album of all time (Music is the Message) by my favorite band, I’ve been listening to this cut for 35 years (and trying to fine tune the groove for 12). Swinging that kick pattern and all the nuances at that tempo made it the most challenging of all these covers for me. The late great “Funky” George Brown, my greatest inspiration on the set. 

This strays furthest from the original of all the covers we’ve done but…

1) nailing everything 100% precise proves a point but sometimes you’ve gotta make it your own and

2) this song REALLY ain’t easy to duplicate.

Well, now it’s our own thing haha. Salute George, Ronald “Khalis” Bell, Kool and the whole Gang always. And Mr. Muhammad.

Some real heavy cop show funk from us! From day one The Du-Rites have kinda been on the fringes of the funk/soul world. Partly because we come from divergent music backgrounds but also we never tried to mimic any specific era. Funk = “retro” to many but we’re all over the place, so there’s no rules for what we use to get our sound, whether it’s trash or treasure. For this, Danger Mouse let me borrow two keyboards (the Korg Micro Preset and the Baldwin Discoverer) because I’ve been solely focused on drums and ain’t updated my studio in years. Pablo used a Peavey amp that our live show bassist Bill Harvey found on the sidewalk for trash pickup. I played a can of WD-40 for percussion in the second half of the song when the beat switches up. To us, it’s less about gear and year / label / region authenticity than using what you got and what you’re vibing with at any given moment to make it funky.

Check out the new tune on Bandcamp

Spotify

Apple Music

or whichever DSP you prefer. Dig!

We’re back on it with the NOLA funk of The Meters. Always inspired by Zig on the set! And my New Orleans family roots. Salute P.E., EPMD, etc.

Back on it with Soul Supreme. We stretched into some velour bathrobe funk at the end but it was calling! Always a fan of the Mashout. Respect to Fame, Billy and DJ Premier.

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It’s finally out! Recorded in the thick of the pandemic as warm-up jamming before working as a studio band, this Teo Macero-style editing of those jams is a funky as hell but still somewhat genre-less instrumental record that you can listen to and…come up with your own description/category! Having been with this band since 2016 (we were backing up soul singer Ben Pirani then), to see this record come to fruition is the full-circle result of 8 years of musical chemistry we built with constant touring, rehearsing, jamming and doing ’60s style recording sessions. It’s a wild ride but you WILL headnod.

The Means of Production: Rafferty Swink – Keyboards, Editing / Me (Jay Mumford) – Drums / Matt Gibbs – Guitar / Pat Carr – Bass, Moog Bass / Tre D’Ambrocia – Vibraphone / Ben Pirani – Guitar, Tambourine

Dig it on Spotify

Or Apple Music

Or pick up the vinyl on Royal Potato Family

The sound of now!

Dig.

Back on it with Soul Supreme, covering a more obscure cut from the great Roy Ayers. Found this album in pop’s record collection when I was 14 and I always loved it, but it took on new meaning when I first started playing drums to records and learning by ear, in 2012 or so. Dug in on this album often. It’s also the first documented session credit for the late great Alphonse Mouzon, who went on to be a prolific giant in drumming.

We’re back! With “Chop Cheese,” sleazy, Du-Disco summer funk tune that was composed and performed to appear in your head as you roll up to the Chop Cheese Delicatessen on any given corner in NYC. You can just put the top down and enjoy it if you’re not near any Chop Cheese Delicatessens. Or sit at home with it on in the background while you work in Excel. Whatever floats your boat, just do it with a funk state of mind. Enjoy it on:

Bandcamp

Spotify

Apple Music

This is the first of a series of digital / DSP singles we’ll be releasing over the remainder of 2024. For our vinyl folks, pick up our last 7″, “Go Funk Me” b/w “Bucket” here.

Stay tuned and thanks for your support!

Back at it with Soul Supreme, covering “Crown Ones” by People Under the Stairs. Shouts to Thes One. Double K Rest in Peace.

The Isley Brothers’ “The Heat Is On” with the one and only Soul Supreme. I first heard this cut when I was four years old; my mom bought the cassette tape from Bluebird taxi stand in the New Rochelle Mall. Bluebird had a small selection of tapes on the back wall to squeeze extra bread from you while you waited for a cab 😂. The album itself was already six years old by then but it was special for me from the first listen. Salute the great, generation-spanning Isleys (and Chris Jasper) and Grap Luva for the Mt. Vernon music alum t-shirt since we’re talking about New Ro and it’s long defunct and demolished dead mall I grew up in.