Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band, or as they’re newly known, only The Fellowship Band, just finished a week’s worth of shows at the Village Vanguard in NYC, the first significant run of shows for one of jazz’s most potent and evocative ensembles in over a year and a half. In the interim the group has played a number of gigs at jazz festivals and other one-off situations, and in that time has shed the guitar role formerly held by Kurt Rosenwinkel to create a somewhat more traditional line-up without reducing its muscle and energy in the slightest. The run prominently featured a few new tunes, especially a longer piece entitled ARK LA TEX, and moved other recent staples into the rarely heard category.
To mark the event and give a little insight into the incredible songwriting at work in the band, this week’s Stormy Monday features two long, unreleased cuts from the band, both without guitar. The first is a monster version of Migration from the summer of 2005, and the second is a blazing King’s Highway from the 2010 fairgrounds set at Jazz Fest, where the Fellowship was widely acclaimed as delivering the performance of the weekend.
