There have been a lot of words to describe good funk music.
Dirty.
Gritty.
Grimy.
When done right, funk should make your face scrunch up, your head nod and your body move in ways even you might not have expected.
So when Ghost-Note was searching for a way to describe one of their new songs, drummer Robert “Sput” Searight says, the band started searching for something that hadn’t been used before.
“We were going back to the Parliament days, and we were talking about all of the symbolism of funk. People cover their nose. People would use phrases like ‘stanky.’ So we were trying to figure out words that hadn’t been used in the groupings,” Searight says. “And we’re such foodies. I thought ‘mustard’ and ‘onions.’”
It’s easy to imagine the smell of mustard and raw onions — and there it is, the stank face.
“Mustard n’Onions” was a good name for the track, and Ghost-Note decided to keep the title for its full-length album released in 2024. The album was well-received last year, and it has helped drive the funk-jazz-hip-hop collective into a busy 2025 touring, including an appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk in November.
Ghost-Note makes a stop in New Orleans on Saturday, Dec. 20, for two sets at the recently re-engineered New Orleans Jazz & Blues Market. The band will play songs from “Mustard n’Onions,” and it’s also the band’s last show before the holidays.
“We’re gonna have a Christmas funky good time,” Searight says.
Searight, who’s also a keys player, co-founded Ghost-Note in 2014 with percussionist Nate Werth while the two were members of the jazz fusion band Snarky Puppy. The duo released an album, “Fortified,” in 2015 largely made with guest musicians, but with 2018’s “Swagism,” a more consistent band began to form with seasoned musicians who had played with Prince, Kendrick Lamar, Kirk Franklin, Erykah Badu and Herbie Hancock.
Along with Searight and Werth, the fluid Ghost-Note lineup includes bassist MonoNeon, guitarist Peter Knudsen, saxophonists and flautists Sylvester Onyejiaka, Jonathan Mones and Mike Jelani Brooks, trombonist Dany Wytanis and keyboardists Dominique Xavier Taplin and Vaughn Henry.
The band started working on what would become “Mustard n’Onions” in 2019 while touring off their “Swagism” release. Being on the road together helped the members steadily hone the Ghost-Note sound — an unstoppable groove and charismatic style — and every chance they could, the band would book studio time in different cities and record. The band ended up recording around 30 songs during that stretch before the pandemic hit in 2020, Searight says.
Touring “led us into the direction, in my opinion, of where I thought we needed to go, and the music just evolved in the way that encompassed the band we had on the road,” Searight says. “When we got to ‘Mustard n’Onions,’ we knew our sound. We knew our personalities. It was a fun record to do because we were all excited about this new sound we discovered.”
That sense of fun is all over “Mustard n’Onions,” which clocks in at 80 minutes, as well as in the band’s Tiny Desk appearance. There’s also a lot of joy on the album — although, for Searight, “maturity” is more the word he associates with this album.
“I think we kind grew up on this record,” he says. “The word ‘joy’ is fitting as well because we definitely play with joy. But I don’t think that would be a new addition to it. I think that’s one of the things our fanbase has always been mesmerized by: our sense of joy when we’re playing with each other on stage, where we’re supporting one another in a way that most bands don’t let the audience in on.”
Tickets to the Dec. 20 shows start at $25.30 via jazzandbluesmarket.com. Find Ghost-Note at ghost-note-official.com.
Keep the tree up for Mardi Gras.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nola.com ’
