WALKING THE TIGHTROPE Budos Band
Aug 31, 2010
The Daptone Recs' ten-piece branches out while retaining its signature sound.
BY ANDY TENNILLE
"It's sorta Afrobeat, it's sorta soul, it's sorta funk, and it's sorta rock," Jared Tankel says, pausing for a few seconds to consider his back-of-the-tour-bus assessment of the Budos Band en route to a gig in Quebec. "Shit, I don't really even know what music we're playing at this point. It's just us."
Tankel is right, of course. With the release earlier this month of Budos Band III, their third full-length since debuting on Brooklyn-based Daptone Records in 2005, the Staten Island ten-piece have cranked out authentic Afro-soul music that deftly walks the artistic tightrope of paying homage to their musical forbearers while simultaneously charting a course decidedly their own.
"We started out writing and wanting to play 10-minute-plus arranged Afrobeat songs, but after a while, we found ourselves getting bored playing these long songs without a vocalist, so we cut the songs down some and found a more Afro-funk sound," says Tankel, the band's baritone saxophonist. "That was really what you hear on our first record. After that came out, we got into a really heavy listening diet of Ethiopian jazz. We also listened to a lot of American soul. Both of those come through strong on our second album, I think."
Both slabs won widespread praise as fans and critics alike compared the young upstarts to the likes of the legendary Fela Kuti and Ethiopian jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke. For Daptone label chief Gabe Roth, who produced and engineered all three Budos Band albums, all the lofty comparisons missed the point.
"None of them sound anything like Fela to me," Roth says, "and none of them sound really Ethiopian at all, but they're influenced by all that stuff. If you listen to any of their music, you can hear the influences, but none of their records sound anything like that to me. They all sound like Budos records to me, man."
For Budos Band III, Tankel and company began writing shortly after the release of their 2007 sophomore effort and spent the subsequent two years road-testing the new songs in front of audiences across the country and around the world. "We really used the time on the road to hone them down, so the songs aren't really that new to any of us," he explains. "But I think they really benefited from that experience because we were able to play them out and see what worked."
In January, Roth summoned the band to Daptone's House of Soul studio in Bushwick just as the group ended a long tour. "Those guys were fresh off the road, so they'd fleshed out most of the songs pretty good and had their arrangements together," Roth remembers. "We cut it in three days. I think we did one day to get sounds and two days of recording and overdubs. That's it."
"Went in on a Friday night and finished Sunday afternoon," Tankel recalls. "That's kinda been our style the past couple of albums. Everyone was on point. On a couple of songs, we did only two takes and chose between the two. It went super smooth."
Roth - who normally takes charge of both the production and songwriting for Daptone's flagship artist, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - says his role changes when working with the Budos Band.
"Those guys know what they're doing, so I mainly just stay out of the way," Roth says about the session. "I weigh in here and there on which takes to keep, and I'll throw out a small idea every once in a while on a new intro or a different beat. I probably contribute a little bit of the psychedelic stuff to it, throwing delays and other stuff in."
In a lot of ways, Budos Band III picks up where its predecessor left off. The band's trademark sound remains intact, but the whole affair has a heftier feel that Tankel credits to the band's current listening habits. "It's funny," Tankel says, "we drive around in our van, and all that the guys ever want to listen to these days is rock music. I don't think you could ever say a Budos Band album is a rock record, but the drumming and bass parts on this record are definitely more rockin'.
"Unbroken, Unshaven" may be the best example of the more rockin' Budos sound. A super heavy song with fairly straightforward guitar and horns parts, the song is one of the simplest tunes on the record and is indicative of where the band's next album might fall. "When we wrote that, I think we all recognized the emergence of a new voice," Tankel says. "It was like a light was turned on, and we all saw a new direction for the band to head in."
"What I like about the Budos Band is that they've got their sound: they know what it is, and I know what it is," Roth says. "It's pretty clear what we're gonna do when we get together. Not that we don't experiment and explore when we're in the studio, but for the most part, everyone heads in the same direction."
[Photo Credit: Kisha Bari]
The Budos Band is currently on tour in the U.S. Go to the official website for dates.
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