The last time Richmond witnessed the deep soul grooves, smooth jazz sounds, gospel-esque vocals, and raw, contagious energy of Brooklyn’s The Nth Power was back in April when they played a show at The Camel.
The last time Richmond witnessed the deep soul grooves, smooth jazz sounds, gospel-esque vocals, and raw, contagious energy of Brooklyn’s The Nth Power was back in April when they played a show at The Camel.
The funk/soul quartet has been busy heavily touring the country and putting together their latest album, To Be Free-Live, which dropped Nov. 11, and now The Nth Power will return to our city to put a fire in our hearts and fill our souls with love this Wednesday at The Broadberry.
RVA Mag recently had a chance to chat with The Nth Power bassist Nate Edgar on touring, and the new album which was all recorded live, a first for the band.
“To translate a live show into a studio is next to impossible so it was great to set up a live recording and go at it from that direction,” Edgar said.
This will be the third record for the band who recorded the nine-track album in July during two nights of live performances in Boston at The Bridge Sound & Stage and one night in Brooklyn at The Knitting Factory.
Edgar said they were able to accomplish a clean, crisp in-studio sound on the previous album, Abundance and with this new record they wanted to capture the essence and energy of the band’s live performance.
“We wanted to give people a new experience, live there’s a certain energy that happens especially for us, ” he said. “There’s a certain ferocity we play with live that’s hard to capture in the studio, we just wanted to capture that vibe…”
To help them achieve that raw, live vibe, they recruited the expertise of Paul Diaz, owner of Atlanta-based studio Tree Sound Studios. Edgar said Diaz, who has worked on records in the past for Outkast, Whitney Houston and Elton John, mixed and recorded the band’s album.
Seven songs on The Nth Power’s To Be Free represent original material for the band and much of the material touches on major social issues and heavy subjects. And while the album tackles some of the issues the world is facing head on, at the same time, it provides us a way to cope and get through the tough times.
“There’s a couple lyrically-based songs around social awareness, there’s some about love, and there’s just about being alive some whatever we’re going with were trying to be honest with ourselves about what were trying to say to the people,” Edgar said.
In the powerful, bluesy track “Take My Soul,” the band sings of a runaway slave who surrenders his soul to God before being captured and killed.
“My hands are tied behind me/blood drips down my face/ I can’t escape this fate/ and I cannot feel my Lord’s sweet embrace/ my wife and daughter gone/ taken right before my eyes/ I pray to die and join them/ but before I must be a bull’s prize,” vocalist and guitarist Nick Cassarino croons.
The band also released a new video for the politically-charged rock song, “Truth” the first single from the live album which uses a news ticker and scrolling lyrics with current headlines to illustrate the message.
“We really didn’t pull any punches on that one,” Edgar said. “We just kind of laid it out point-blank as to what is actually happening to people here and around the world,” he said. “The verses are factual, kind of dark, and then the three chords strengthens going up to power people up, and then the chorus brings it all up again, to answer the question that truth is all around us. It’s kind of a three-part build up to let humanity know they have what they need inside of them to fight what’s going on that’s not right.”
Some headlines featured in the video include, “Death toll rises due to inexplicable airborne virus,” “ISIS now believed to be created by U.S government,” and now very fitting, “If elected, presidential nominee says he plans to deport Muslims and Mexicans.”
Besides churning out a new album, The Nth Power has also been heavily touring for over a year since the release of their record Abundance. They embarked on a tour with Snarky Puppy keyboardist Cory Henry and his new solo project, Cory Henry and The Funk Apostles in spring of 2015 and have also been hitting the festival circuit hard the last few years bringing their funky jazz sounds to Camp Bisco, California’s High Sierra Music Festival, Wanee Music Festival in Florida, Wakarusa Music Festival in Arizona and Telluride Music Festival in Colorado.
But as of October, the band has decided to go it alone on the road.
“We did a bunch of tours opening up for bands like Turkuaz and Dopapod and then after that we decided to go out on our own,” Edgar said. “We just wanted to go out and give people a full show rather than an hour set, we wanted to see who was into it and who was coming through.”
The Nth Power’s tour has taken them to Colorado, Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana and Ohio. The group will head to Charlottesville on Tuesday, followed by Richmond, a few Florida and New York dates and wrap up on New Years Eve in Florida again.
And Edgar said the band is looking forward to playing in Richmond for a second time this year.
“We had a great band called The Commonwealth open up for us and they sounded great,” he said, reminiscing on their previous performance here at The Camel. “‘We really love Richmond there’s a lot of great bands that are coming out of Richmond…I’m excited to meet some new Richmond folk.”
You can catch The Nth Power at The Broadberry this Wed., Nov. 16 along with Threesound, Mowenna Lasko and Jay Pun. Show starts at 9 pm at tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Grab yours here.
