TONIGHT AT THE TURF CLUB: GHOST FUNK ORCHESTRA

The New York City-based Ghost Funk Orchestra is hitting St. Paul’s Turf Club tonight (a Monday) for the first time in the band’s touring history.

Lovers of psychedelic funk and soul wouldn’t want to miss this band, which will be pared down to a six-piece to fit on the Turf Club’s stage, as  well as other rooms on this leg of their tour, according to bandleader Seth Applebaum, who chatted with Jam in the Stream in anticipation of Monday’s show.

The band is in the midst of one of their most extensive tours. Find tickets for tonight’s show and information on the rest of the tour here.

This newer band has been fairly prolific, with three albums out since 2019. Their name kind of says it all, with such a soulful jazzy vibe that fuses different genres.

Applebaum, a guitarist, does get to live his own dream of carrying the music, influences and ideas that they inspire to create new music. He has a home recording studio that allows him to easily work on ideas and get them recorded.

“It’s as simple as if I have an idea, I just play downstairs and make something,” he said. “That’s how it ends up being as productive as it is because there are no barriers. I can get as much done on the instruments that I play and once it is in a good spot I bring in horns and strings and vocals or whatnot. It’s very easy for me to just have an idea and record because I control so much of the process.”

Pressed, he said the band is likely to continue to put out albums at the current pace. 

To that end, he said he said he just turned over the band’s fourth album to their parent label, Colemine Records.

He couldn’t share details of the LP’s release just yet.

While the band typically plays with 10 pieces, it’s pared down to six for this portion of their current tour, adjusting to room sizes.

The lineup will feature two guitars, bass, drums, a baritone saxophone and a vocalist.

“We have representation in every department but scaled down a little bit to make it more tour feasible,” Applebaum said. “It started as almost a garage rock kind of setup, where it was just drums, bass, guitars, vocals. Over time we added horns on the recordings. As we’ve played out more of the horns section became a bigger part of the whole operation. So a lot of the melodies that are an important part of the arrangements are now tossed over to the horn section. It has just been a lot of trial and error and figuring out how to make things sound exciting live. The records are always a little bit different than the live because the live tends to be higher energy.”

Applebaum said he fell in love with this music as a kid growing up in New Jersey with easy access to New York City and the scene being nurtured by the likes of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings and Antibalas.

“Just pop into the city and they were still on the smaller side back then,” he said. “So it was very accessible to see them at these little bars. Those bands were the impetus for me to put together something that was bigger than like a little three-piece or four-piece. I wanted to be part of a big organization. But then I listen to a lot of different stuff. A lot of salsa is kind of seeped into what or how I try to write. I spent a lot of my youth listening to Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. There is a lot of stuff that shows up more on the records than the live show sometimes because the instrumentation on the records is way more expansive than what we bring out live. So the live thing is kind of the Dap-Kings are kind of my gold standard, what a live band could and should be. I think any band that is in our genre probably would cite them as an influence, too. The whole Daptone (Records) signal really paved the way for most of the bands that we’re friends with and are doing this kind of music in 2023.”