This week at Friday Cheers: Snarky Puppy / Butcher Brown

Beat the heat on Brown’s Island this Friday with Butcher Brown and Snarky Puppy.

June 15, 2015; 12:00 PM • by Ross Catrow

Things kick off at 6:00 PM; tickets are $10, and children under 12 are free. Here’s a quick preview of what to expect this week, and, of course, there’s more info on their Facebook page.

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Butcher Brown

Genre: Funk
Sounds kinda like: Seven minutes in heaven
Sweet jam: “Sticky July”
Listen to the album: All Purpose Music on rdio »
Facebook

Another incredibly funky release from the local dudes at Jellowstone Records. I recommend you make them and all of their releases, Butch Brown included, the soundtrack of your summer. Why write anything else about Butcher Brown when you can just quote this bit from their bandcamp, written by a flugelhornist:

In an era where people eschew tangibility for technology, Butcher Brown is a ray of hope for the future. They are soldiers of peace, armed with respect for the lineage of Black music, who aren’t afraid to push forward. Rooted in the soil of the earth, their music reflects an aesthetic that exists beyond chronology. As anomalous as brown leaves of fall on a spring tree, they cause you to question exactly how a group of relatively “young” men possess such “old” souls.

They are agents of a continuum. A spectrum of color that defies categorical constructs, like that of dusk settling across the evening sky. They are a subtle, yet beautiful, reminder that after the darkness of nightfall, we are soon to expect the promise of the sun.

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Snarky Puppy

Genre: Instrumental fusion
Sounds kinda like: Herbie Hancock clone army
Sweet jam: “Shofukan” (The 4:30 mark! So good!)
Listen to the album: We Like it Here on rdio »
snarkypuppy.com

Snarky Puppy: Just one million Grammy-award-winning artists jamming away on their multitudinous instruments. What I want to know is which freaking genius scheduled this dang band for this dang hottest of weeks? It’s the perfect music to listen to on Richmond’s sweaty public riverbank: you can jam, but jam just hard enough to only sweat the minimum amount.

You really got to see these guys in action to get a feel for the bigness of their band: