Tribute To Led Zeppelin & P-Funk Announced For Jazz Fest Late Night Show
New Orleans during Jazz Fest provides the ultimate platform for artists to pay tribute to their favorite bands, musicians, and songwriters. The city is hallowed grounds for any musician, as it is ground zero for jazz, funk, and the improvisation that acts as the core of today’s live music scene. For Michelangelo Carubba, drummer in the power-funk group Turkuaz, the impetus to pay homage to his influences while in New Orleans was so strong that, instead of picking between his favorite bands, he decided to pay tribute to two of them at once! Z-Funk: A Tribute To Led Zeppelin & Parliament Funkadelic will feature unique arrangements of songs by Led Zeppelin and P-Funk, with an all-star band that features some of the best and funkiest players he could find. Z-Funk will take place on Sunday, April 29th (technically early AM 4/30) immediately following Aaron Johnston‘s electronic improvisation project, J.E.D.I. (Jazz Electronic Dance Improvisation) at the same venue, Maison on Frenchmen Street.
For this special performance, Carubba will be joined by pedal steel master Roosevelt Collier and guitar prodigy Brandon “Taz” Niederauer, who will team up to form a high-octane dual-guitar attack. Steve Swatkins of Allen Stone‘s band will be on keys, and will surely make use of his talkbox skills as well. Rob Walker, bassist from The Main Squeeze, will hold down the low end, while Carubba’s partner in Turkuaz, Shira Elias, will provide vocals. Finally, Snarky Puppy‘s Mike “Maz” Maher and Chris Bullock will provide some much-needed brass on trumpet and saxophone, respectively.
With so many amazing songs in each band’s repertoire, the night will surely feature hit song after hit song. Carubba has proven himself as a uniquely motivated bandleader, concocting many special tribute shows in New York City, Colorado, and elsewhere over the past few years. He has promised to have a few tricks up his sleeve for this show, and by leaning on the catalogs of Led Zeppelin and P-Funk, has crafted the perfect way for those in attendance to close out weekend one of the marathon that is New Orleans Jazz Fest.
Carubba, for one, is excited to bring this concept to life, telling L4LM:
“Both bands hit hard. Both bands hit on the one a whole lot. That’s funky to me. That’s funky to everyone whether they know it or not. John Bonham knew. People consider him a rock drummer, but that’s a funky mother f*cker. So we’re gonna be on the one all night long. And this band I assembled is truly great.”
Tickets for this show are on-sale NOW. There is a 24-hour discounted pre-sale running, which you can access at this link. Standard tickets go on sale tomorrow, Friday, March 16th at 1:00 PM EST. For full information on this show, including the show art from Jimmy Rector (@jimmyrector), see below.