Eclectic, Greensboro-based roots-jazz-ragtime ensemble Holy Ghost Tent Revival rolls to the Rocket Club on Thursday, July 9. They’ll play with the new Asheville-based updated-jazz-band The Funk Messengers. Want to go? Xpress is giving away two spots on the list. The cover is a mere $7, but free’s free, right? ***Update: Tickets have been won! ***
The band’s getting some great press lately, and gearing up for a run of shows at regional roots-based festivals. Send the name of one of their upcoming fests to ae@mountainx.com and get in free (with a guest) to the show on Thursday. Listen to their music here or watch videos here.
“The (band) play a fantastically entertaining mixture of dirty jazz, roots country/bluegrass, big band and rock that can only be described as explosively intoxicating. The kind of “explosive” that one of those people shot from a cannon perhaps feels,” writes Matthew Godbey, of The (Charleston) Post & Courier.
“Don’t think too hard about the genre in which Holy Ghost Tent Revival should be pigeonholed. Rather, get up, dance with your eyes closed and relish in the fact that the Greensboro (band) makes euphonium and banjo sound good together…Holy Ghost recalls a New Orleans jazz band rocking out, reminding us that, for a time, jazz wasn’t much more than good and dirty dance music,” writes Andrew Ritchey of Raleigh’s Independent Weekly.
Their most unusual recent press comes from the quirky, tortillas-based music review site, wherein the burning (and grammatically-problematic) question is asked, “If HGTR where a plate of nachos, who would embody what topping?”
As for the Funk Messengers, their brand-spankin’ new, and here’s a description: “A take on the late, great Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, The Funk Messengers take a funky twist to old jazz standards, a unique approach to contemporary covers of jazz classics. Along with funky originals, The Funk Messengers utilized their classically-trained talent in jazz and Latin styles to revamp contemporary music.”
Listen to their takes on the jazz/funk gems “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” and “Cissy Strut” here.
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