Breathe and smile. Anders Osborne is coming to Squaw Valley.
News that Osborne will play at the Brews, Jazz and Funk Fest came on the same day of his album release for “Buddha and The Blues.”
The annual weekend musical celebration at the Village at Squaw Valley will be Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 10-11. The first day will feature Osborne, Sister Sparrow & the Dirty Birds, Sal’s Greenhouse and another band to be announced. On Sunday, it will be Five Alarm Funk, The Humidors, Jelly Bread and another band to be announced.
Osborne is an intense performer in the blues and jam realm who lives in New Orleans. He commented on his new record in a press statement: “’Buddha and the Blues’ means the duality of our existence. The lyrics are supposed to be true, conversational, and uplifting with clean, classic, and thumpin’ sounds. That’s what I set out to accomplish.”
Ridiculously flamboyant, Canada’s Five Alarm Funk are superstars of the Burning Man festival. Sixteen years in the making, Tayo Branston (drums/vocals), Gabe Boothroyd (guitar), Oliver Gibson (guitar), Jason Smith (bass), Thomas Towers (congas), Ricki Valentine (timbales), Eli Bennett (saxophone) and Kent Wallace (trumpet) have grown their tribe year by year, show by show, knucklehead by knucklehead.
Fronted by Arleigh Kincheloe, Sister Sparrow’s outrageously big soul vocals have been wowing audiences out front of the
horn-fueled Dirty Birds worldwide for more than a decade. The seven-piece band is from the Catskill Mountains in New York.
The Humidors are an eight-piece funk R&B band from Oakland.
“We’ve been adapting old-school soul with new-school soul and putting our own Bay Area twist to it,” guitarist Mike Mulqueen said. “We’re like Pink Floyd. You can’t really pin us down. We are funk and soul, but then we can also be very psychedelic. We’ve been mashing up psychedelic, soul and funk.”
Related story: Sister Sparrow flies out of her nest with ‘Gold’ nuggets.
