Music Monday: Review: Wheedle’s Groove, Kearney Barton

This album brings the Seattle funk scene to great absurdist life.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


After decades of experience in Seattle’s funk scene, most of the players on Kearney Barton are in their 60s, though you’d never know it from these exhilarating new recordings. There’s an itchy edge to Overton Berry’s shimmering piano and Ron Buford’s sexy Hammond B3 organ that suggests eager rookies, not grizzled vets. A sultry cover of Soundgarden’s “Jesus Christ Pose” surpasses the histrionic original with an appearance by the Total Experience Gospel Choir, and “H.O.E.,” with rousing backing from studio legends the Muscle Shoals Horns, is an absurdist, George Clinton-style jam.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate