Kings Highway (Stoner Hill Records)
Brian Blade & the Fellowship Band
Released July 2023
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2023
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About:
Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band marks its 26th anniversary in 2023 with the release of their seventh studio album, Kings Highway.
The band formed in 1997, the band released their eponymous Blue Note debut in 1998, but the bond among the musicians goes back to when drummer/composer Brian Blade first met pianist/composer Jon Cowherd in 1988 while attending Loyola University in New Orleans, Louisiana. Along with bassist Christopher Thomas and saxophonists Myron Walden and Melvin Butler,
The Fellowship Band has developed a sound together that echoes grace and unity for everyone who hears their music.
Track Listing:
1. Until We Meet Again (Brian Blade) 4:44
2. Catalysts (Jon Cowherd) 5:04
3. People’s Park (Jon Cowherd) 5:03
4. Kings Highway (Brian Blade) 13:00
5. Look To The Hills (Brian Blade) 4:21
6. Migration (Brian Blade) 15:06
7. God Be With You (Jeremiah E. Rankin / William G. Tome) 2:34
Personnel:
Brian Blade: drums
Jon Cowherd: piano, pump organ
Christopher Thomas: acoustic bass and c.t. synthsizer
Myron Walden: alto saxophone and bass clarinet
Melvin Butler: tenor and soprano saxophones
Kurt Rosenwinkel: guitar
Recorded June 13-15, 2018, at Fantasy Studios, Studio D, Berkeley, CA
Thanks to Fantasy Studio Director: Jeffrey Wood
Produced by Brian Blade and Jon Cowherd
Recorded and Mixed by Jeff Cressman
Assistant Engineers: Robert Kirby and Aidan Nelson
Mastered by Mark Wilder
Executive Production by Leopold Companies, Inc.
Cover Photograph by Brian Blade
Review:
The seventh album from drummer Brian Blade & the Fellowship Band, 2023’s Kings Highway finds Blade and co-leader pianist Jon Cowherd pushing the stylistically wide-ranging ensemble toward a spectral, ’70s fusion-influenced sound. Much of this is due to the return of guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, who amicably parted ways with the group prior to 2014’s Landmarks. In Rosenwinkel’s absence, Blade brought on several other guitarists, including Jeff Parker and Dave Devine. While equally talented players, Parker and Devine favored a more diffuse, sonically textural approach, one that evoked the influence of Bill Frisell. In contrast, Rosenwinkel has a more melodic style, marked by a bright laser-tone motivity, bringing to mind players like Pat Metheny and Larry Coryell. It’s a sound that propels Kings Highway forward and nicely complements the work of bassist Christopher Thomas, as well as the dual sax front line of Melvin Butler and Myron Walden. There’s a golden-hour warmth to the Fellowship’s sound on Kings Highway, and the album has the cinematic feeling of an outdoor nighttime concert. Images pop into your mind with each song, as in the opening “Until We Meet Again,” which feels like a spaceship ascending Earth’s orbit with Rosenwinkel’s shimmering guitar arpeggios cascading rainbow light through Cowherd’s dewy synth clouds before Butler and Walden join in with their own alien harmonies. The rest of the album follows suit as Blade and his group slide into the muted, minor-key atmosphere of “Catalysts” and conjure a shadowy gospel noir dreamworld on the ballad “People’s Park.” While Kings Highway is completely instrumental, it plays like a low-key amalgam of Pink Floyd’s stadium psychedelia and Weather Report’s soulful jazz-rock fusion. It’s a vibrant combination they further underline on “Look to the Hills” and “Migration,” tracks that find the group taking far-reaching solos over Cowherd’s dusky chordal keyboard palettes and Blade’s swinging, polyrhythmic grooves. The album glows to the end as they settle into a church organ-accented rendition of the 1880s hymn “God Be with You,” cocooning the listener in their warm group vibe.
Matt Collar (AllMusic)
