Tag Archives: funk

N.O.S. Back In Time





N.O.S. Back In Time is my latest album, available on all streaming services, CDBaby, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon and many others. It’s a collection of songs I’ve written and sung lead on (save one) with several groups I’ve played with and solo. Tracks included were recorded with the groups Napi Browne, Island and Pulse. There are two solo tracks on which I play everything (except for Drum Drops, remember those) and a Napi Browne rehearsal tape, which although is a cut below the rest in sound quality is a smokin’ track with a live feel. Recorded with a JVC Binaural cassette deck, with no reverb or delay,  the quality is actually quite good.

The track I don’t sing lead on is from my first album with the band Pulse, Another Woman, which is sung by the great Carl Donnell (Augusto). Another Woman is one of the first songs I had written for the band and was recorded at Syncron Sound in Wallingford, CT, now Trod Nossel. The Napi Browne tapes come from two sessions, one in Woodstock at Bearsville Studios, and one in Bridgeport at Paul Leka’s studio. One Napi track was recorded in a home studio. The Island material was recorded at the now defunct studio Blue Rock in Soho, New York City.

A more complete list of credits can be found on the album’s page at CDBaby

The best way to find the album on any of the above listed services is by simply searching on my name Paul Rosano. The player below gives a sample of all the tracks.

Best of 2012



There’s so much good new music out there. The best music of 2012:

1. Radio Music Society, Esperanza Spalding: Invigorating blend of R&B, funk and jazz infused with top-shelf musicianship and an enticing lyrical quality. This is perhaps her best yet. Spalding sports a fluid, proficient and pleasing voice that delivers her poignant lyricism over the engaging compositions. Get the Deluxe Edition with a Making of DVD.

2. Locked Down, Dr. John: Black Keys guitarist Dan Auerbach gets an inspiration to record with the N’Awlins legend and they whip up a spooky, funky, voodoo dose of swamp funk mixed with hard rock sensibilities. Some of the best from recent vintage of the good Doctor.

3. Tramp, Sharon Van Etten: One of the truly remarkable and original sounding records from a singer/songwriter whose dense, penetrating lyrics are revealed through inventive arrangements that complement her songwriting.

4. Sunken Condos, Donald Fagen: At his wry, funky, satirical and stinging best. Glossed with a Steely Dan sheen but it still swings like mad.

5. Everybody’s Talkin’, Tedeschi-Trucks Band: Live outing from one of the best ensembles around today. A beautiful combination of blues, rock and pop whipped together with Derek Trucks’ slide lacing through it and the marvelous Susan Tedeschi’s soulful, blazing voice on top. Not to be missed live.

6. Sun, Cat Power: Return of the elusive, mercurial and magnetic singer/songwriter. Her best since The Greatest.

 7. Election Special, Ry Cooder: Venerable American music stylist gives his biting political take on the present state of affairs with his usual entertaining, insightful views served with a helping of exquisite string playing.

8. Driving Towards The Daylight, Joe Bonamassa: Another edition in the evolving style and development of one of our best modern-day blues guitarists, who happens to have a soulful voice as well.

 9. The Lion, The Beast, The Beat, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals: From the opening strains of the remarkable title track through another set of inspired rock and pop, a step forward and upward from this New England-based group. Their roots are firmly planted in the fertile ground of the 1960s and early ’70s. All framing Potter’s gloriously wild and unrestrained voice.

10. Blues Funeral, Mark Lanegan: Love him for his various collaborations over the years, not the least with Isobel Campbell, but there is something dark and compelling about this bluesy and funereal outing that is addicting. Continue reading Best of 2012

Track of the week: Bonnie Bramlett




Bonnie Bramlett came back to singing in earnest in the early 2000’s after years of pursuing an acting career.

bonnie-bramlett-roots-blues-jazzShe started as the first white Ikette with Ike and Tina Turner in the mid-1960s, then played a big role in the highly influencial Delaney & Bonnie and Friends with her husband at the time Delaney Bramlett. The group featured some prominent members over the years, including Eric Clapton, Dave Mason and even George Harrison. Members of the band went on to play with many other groups, including The Stones, and three — Bobby Whitlock, Jim Gordon and Carl Radle —wound up with Clapton in Derek and The Dominos.

This track is a cover of the Stephen Stills classic Love The One You’re With from his first solo album. It was also a sizable hit for Stills as a single. Bramlett brings a funky, groove-oriented reading to it with jazz substitution chords in place of the heavily suspended sound of the original.

It’s amazing that Bonnie didn’t sing on the original with Stills because the sound of that chorus with Rita Coolidge, Priscilla Jones, Graham Nash, John Sebastian and David Crosby had Delaney & Bonnie written all over it. This track is from Bramlett’s 2006 album Roots, Blues & Jazz, which shows off Bramlett as a proficient jazz singer as well as a queen of blue-eyed soul and R&B.

Under The Radar, No. 2: Neil Larsen




In 1978, keyboardist/composer Neil Larsen released his first solo album, a touchstone in the fusion genre. Jungle Fever, entirely instrumental, displayed a perfect blend of jazz, rock, funk and Latin influences used in combination with innovative and interesting compositions and some brilliant musicianship, which included his longtime partner Buzz Feiten on guitar.

neil-larsen-jungle-feverLarsen and Feiten had first teamed on the seminal jazz-blues-soul album Full Moon in 1972, a modest hit on the charts but highly influential. Likewise Jungle Fever did well enough on first release but wasn’t a chartbuster by any means. Still, it made a lasting impression on the music scene.

He followed it with a similar collection on High Gear (1979), almost as artistically successful, then enjoyed genuine chart success with Feiten in the Larsen-Feiten Band (1980) and a reprise of Full Moon (1982) featuring the two. Both Larsen-Feiten albums brought pop into the mix along with Larsen’s usual influences and crossed over to the Billboard 100. During the 1980s,  he became an influential and very much in-demand studio musician.

The list of artists he has worked with is daunting. You can find it here in notes for his latest album Orbit, released in 2007. This list of musicians ranges from Gregg Allman and The Allman Brothers to George Benson, Cher, Commander Cody, Dr. John, George Harrison, Rickie Lee Jones, Randy Newman, The Stones and many, many more. This past year, he has been playing with Leonard Cohen on the folk singer’s worldwide tour.

But there is no Neil Larsen web site per se and although you can find him in Wikipedia, there is no page dedicated to him. Despite his influential status in the music community and accomplished playing and composing, he simply is not well known to the public in general.

I have Jungle Fever and High Gear on vinyl. Jungle Fever has been available on CD for a while as an import but at prohibitively high prices, so I transferred my vinyl to CD, using a deck connected to my stereo system not my computer, to excellent effect. High Gear is destined for the same treatment. Continue reading Under The Radar, No. 2: Neil Larsen

From The Vaults: Hidden Treasure, No. 4




It’s nearly impossible to call anything by Miles Davis under-appreciated or overlooked. A universally praised trumpet player, Davis created a catalogue that is long, storied and highly influential.

miles-davis-miles-in-the-skyMiles is credited with bringing jazz into the fusion era when he started experimenting in the late 1960s with rock and funk influences as well as a number of players from various backgrounds and styles. He was a leader in the fusion movement, but he was also influenced by what was going on around him, as he had always been, while jazz and rock began to merge in various forms.

Bitches Brew (1969) is rightly chronicled as a seminal work and before it In A Silent Way (1969) and Filles De Kilimanjaro (1968) have received quite a bit of notoriety as the first steps that culminated in Brew. But truly the experiment started with Miles In The Sky in 1968, our fourth Hidden Treasure. This work with his classic quintet, augmented by George Benson on guitar for one track, really was the beginning of fusion for Miles.

Three important aspects of this project were the use of Hancock’s electric piano for the first time by the quintet, the sense of complete collaboration that would manifest more and more in Miles’ music in the coming years, and extended improvisation over one chord or a series of modal chords as opposed to the bebop tradition of seemingly never-ending changes, something he started as far back as Kind Of Blue (1959). Continue reading From The Vaults: Hidden Treasure, No. 4

Turning on to Orange



Among the scores of bands on hundreds of campuses across the country, Orange Television sets itself apart with a blend of rock and funk that approaches the better qualities of progressive rock, no sweeping majestic compositions just hard rocking tunes with proficient and intricate playing.

orange-television-logoThe Amherst, Mass., based trio mixes elements of blues and jazz into its melodic and involved riffs, unusual rhythms and a decided accent on the instrumental and improvisational side to its songs. In fact, sometimes it seems the songs exist simply to push the musical side of the compositions further along.

Still, the group’s songwriting skills are more than capable and guitarist Howie Feibusch’s vocals make up for any minor technical shortcomings with an impassioned delivery.

The band’s recently released five-song EP One Old Fashioned Donut, written by the trio, shows off all these sides of the group and can be heard at either ReverbNation or MySpace.

The opener, Slave With Neon Blood begins with a riff reminiscent of early Jethro Tull but quickly transitions to a funky groove riding under Feibusch’s vocal. Another shift in direction brings on a long musical interlude showing off Feibusch’s combination of technically adept and creative riffing and improvisational skills over an almost spooky sounding rhythm laid down by bassist Myles Heffernan and drummer Alex Lombardi. Continue reading Turning on to Orange

An Original CAST! Performance




I went up to Black-Eyed Sally’s in Hartford Saturday to catch an exciting and talented group of young musicians, Coryell Auger Sample Trio (CAST!). The group played two sets, providing a smokin’ blend of funky fusion, steeped in bebop, blues and rock via Venice, California, where the trio hales from.

All three have well-known fathers in the world of jazz-rock, but each stands clearly on his own as a proficient player and composer of note.

castGuitarist Julian Coryell is the son of jazz-rock pioneer and legend Larry Coryell, Karma Auger’s dad is Brian Auger, who played with Julie Driscoll and led the Trinity and Oblivion Express in the ’60s and ’70s, and Nicklas Sample is the son of Joe Sample, the keyboard player from L.A. based fusion band The Crusaders.

CAST! played material from their first album, Coolidge Returns, which they sell at live shows and on their web site, including Walk Of The Dragon, Rice Krispy Socrates, Nadine and Purple Panther, as well as tunes from an upcoming second album. The band cooked in the first set, but really opened up in the second with a slant more toward the rock end of things.

Each player displayed his virtuosity within the context of the band. Coryell mixes high doses of blues-inflected playing with flights of jazz lines that combine stunning technique with deep feeling. Auger lays down infectious funk grooves that create a solid foundation and augments them with brilliant latin-flavored to straight-ahead rock flourishes around his kit. And Sample is equally at home providing soulful funk, driving rock or matching Coryell on swift, doubled melodic lines.

I saw Karma play with Brian and his sister, Savannah, two years ago in the latest version of the Oblivion Express at Stage One in Fairfield for a night of extraordinary organ-fueled tunes, many classics from the Express repertoire. Brian Auger was in fine form that night playing with the fire, virtuosity and abandon he has always exhibited on his timeless jazz-funk compositions. Highly recommended when they make their way back to the East Coast. Check tour dates and a definitive collection of his work on his web site.

After playing a string of West Coast dates, CAST! has been on the East Coast for the past week and plays for one more week in Baltimore, Boston and New York before heading home.

In all, a wonderful night of music from three outstanding, rising stars.

cast-trio-portrait