09/05/08 Soulive/Lettuce @ Highline Ballroom, New York, NY

This late summer throwdown featured two of my favorite modern funk jambands, with enough shared members and collaborators so as to be neatly interchangeable. Throw in the Shady Horns and it's always a dance party.

03/19/08 Scotty Hard Benefit @ Highline Ballroom, New York, NY

The early months of 2008 turned out to be quite fertile in terms of epic concert events. Just a couple months after a "best show ever" contender, came this viable canidate.

This was a benefit for a prolific producer who happened to have worked with nearly all of my favorite local musicians, so the night featured the creme de la creme of New York City's venerable jazz and jam scene.

The night was a bit of a blur, with the stand outs being Bill Laswells dirty dub bass bombs and Antibalas' high energy late night set to a nearly empty venue.

Various ensembles throughout the evening featured permutations of NYC luminaries like MMW, Soulive, Sex Mob and the Benevento/Russo Duo.

Jazz licks by John Scofield and Vijay Iyer punctuated the jams.

There was even a bit of indie thrown in the mix.

All in all, it was a stirring testament to the cameraderie, vitality, and abundant talent of NYC's always stellar music scene.

07/28/07 The Join w/Marc Brownstein & Aron Magner @ Highline Ballroom, New York, NY

When the New Deal bassist Dan Kurtz formed an the electropop group Dragonette with his wife, the remaining members of the trio created this collaboration project featuring a rotating cast of the finest improvisers on the jam scene.

This show paired the New Deal's keyboardist and drummer with two members of the Disco Biscuits, Marc Brownstein and Aron Magner.

It was a high energy dance party, just as I would've expected from a mixture of two of my favorite groups. The tunes were mostly jams with a dash of New Deal and Disco Biscuit flavor, along with a couple of choice covers.

This was my first time at the Highline Ballroom, named after the nearby abandoned Highline railroad tracks, which would soon be transformed into an elevated park.

Listen to the show HERE.