Butcher Brown
August 19 @ 19:00
Virginia — Old Dominion itself, one of the original 13 — is about as teeming with historical and cultural significance as a state can possibly be. “But it also literally has a visceral connection,” says trumpeter and saxophonist Marcus Tenney — one fifth of the Richmond-based, boundary-erasing quintet Butcher Brown.
His mind wanders to Saturday afternoons in fall — cruising west on Highway 64, down the 81, soaking up the increasingly dazzling hues. “Especially when you don’t want to play a wedding gig, you start trying to find things that are cool about it,” he says wryly. “And then, over the course of however many years, it becomes a personal thing to drive those roads.”
Of course, when considering the commingling of Black musical traditions, Butcher Brown — whose sound encompasses jazz, hip-hop, soul, funk, R&B, and that’s just the beginning — is one dot on a sprawling landscape. But across more than 15 years and something like a dozen albums, Tenney, Randazzo, guitarist Morgan Burrs, percussionist Corey Fonville, and keyboardist DJ Harrison have managed a lane all their own.
Butcher Brown describe their new album, Letters from the Atlantic, as a travelogue up and down the East Coast: from the Chesapeake Bay to New York, down to Florida, and over to Europe.