Whipping Post

The Allman Brothers Band is one of the all-time great groups. What an incredibly gifted bunch of musicians they were. And, of course, beset by death, tragedy and other adversities.

Recently, Bob Leftsetz posted a link on his blog to a great video of the Allman Brothers Band, recorded in 1970. The tune they perform on this video is “Whipping Post” — a great jam tune with both jazz and rock influences.

Although I am arguably 40 years behind the times here, this is very much the type of feel I am going for with my current work. So, I had to take a crack at it. Again, it is a strict quartet: Guitar, bass, keys and drums — where I play the bass and guitar parts and program the others. Actually for this tune I played some of the keyboard parts as well — including the organ solo.

Please don’t hold me to a Duane Allman standard — I will never be there no matter how long I try. But I hope my version does justice to his  memory.

[audio http://home.comcast.net/%7Edrahcir.nilknarf/music/fusion/whippingpost.mp3]

 

Turn Around

This is a tune I originally wrote about 5 years ago. I released a much more heavily produced and more smooth-jazzy version on my album A Step Along the Way.

This arrangement and recording is similar, but has a rock guitar lead sound, and overall a more muscular approach, especially in the drum part. It also has fewer tracks, again being arranged for a quartet of guitar, bass, keys and drums. As always, I played the guitar and bass and programmed the keyboard and drum parts.

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Maiden Voyage

The other day, for some reason, it occurred to me that this great Herbie Hancock classic would work in a jazz-rock fusion setting such as I have been doing lately. So here it is:

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Seven Eves

Sometimes the urge to write asserts itself even when there really isn’t time. So I had to make some time for this tune over this weekend.

It’s called “Seven Eves” — yes, another palindrome name. I’m not sure what best describes the style — the the feel of the head is a samba and the solo section is swing.

Again, this is a guitar, bass, keys, drums quartet with me playing the guitar and bass parts — and no overdubbing or impossible to actually play things going on in the programmed parts.

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