North Bay soul outfit Monophonics teams with R&B veteran Lee Fields at Fillmore
Bay Area soul institution Monophonics kicks off a co-headlining tour with gritty R&B vocalist Lee Fields at the Fillmore in San Francisco Thursday night.
One of the North Bay's most creative R&B groups, Monophonics has gone through a dramatic evolution over the course of nearly two decades in existence. Founded by drummer Austin Bolman in 2005, the quintet initially mined a vein of instrumental jazz-funk similar to boogaloo revivalists The Sugarman 3, Soulive, and the Greyboy Allstars — whose saxophonist, Karl Denson, guested on the crew's 2010 album Into the Infrasounds.
The group's third album, 2012's In Your Brain, showed the results of what sounded like the members of Monophonics doing some serious woodshedding in the Temptations' "Psychedelic Shack." Introducing a fuzzed-out guitar sound soaked in Echoplex delay, tunes like "Sure Is Funky," "All Together," and the title track were reminiscent of the acid-laced grooves of early Funkadelic and noted Motown producer Norman Whitfield's most tripped-out creations with the Temps and Edwin Starr.
The album also featured a stellar cover of "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" that holds its own against the timeless Nancy Sinatra and Terry Reid versions of the Sonny Bono-penned classic and pointed towards the next turn the band's sound would take. While still steeped in the '60s sound, the band's latest recording, Sound of Sinning, embraces a different side of the psychedelic era.
Without abandoning distorted guitars and funk breaks altogether, the new Monophonics album offers up intricate orchestrations and slow-burn balladry spotlighting keyboardist Kelly Finnigan's remarkable pipes while nodding equally to the lush chamber pop of the Beach Boys and the Zombies. In 2015, the band delivered a fiery set on the main Banjo Stage for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass that was a highlight of the festival.
The following year, the group was a featured act at BottleRock in Napa and in 2018 played Outside Lands, completing a trifecta of major Bay Area music festivals. The group also issued their EP Mirrors, a collection of well-known and obscure covers, that tided fans over until the release of their 2020 effort It's Only Us, the band's first full-length for noted retro soul imprint Colemine Records.
Following the path taken by Finnigan on his solo debut Tales People Tell that embraced the languid sounds of lowrider soul balladry, the album found the group coming into its own with its lush tunes and intricate string and horn arrangements that at points recall the majesty of classic Curtis Mayfield and Rotary Connection records.
While it was initially unable to promote the album with touring due to the COVID shutdown, the band would also release a digital-only instrumental version of the album before finally being able to play some live dates last year. The group remained busy, writing and recording another round of new material for their latest release Sage Motel. A loose concept album built around the happenings and characters inhabiting a fictional bohemian inn, the collection of songs further pushes the envelop of orchestrated, dreamlike atmospheres the band has become so skilled at crafting.
While Finnigan released his latest solo effort last fall with the celebrated collection A Lover Was Born and will be embarking on a solo UK/European tour later in January, he and Monophonics will hit the road for a string of dates that find the group co-headlining with fellow R&B favorite Lee Fields.
Much like his fellow soul singers Bettye LaVette and the late Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley, gritty funk shouter Fields delivers impassioned, heart-on-the-sleeve vocals that hearken back to the music's classic '60s era. Fields started his recording career in 1969 after relocating from his home in North Carolina to New York City while still in his teens.
With moves, a sound and even a physical resemblance to James Brown, Fields earned the nickname "Little J.B." and recorded a cover of Brown's 1959 hit "Bewildered" for his first single release on the Bedford Records label. He would put out a number of funk 45s for a variety of different labels during the early '70s while sharing stages with such notables as Kool & the Gang and O.V. Wright. He would work with the label Angle 3 Records during the latter part of the decade, eventually issuing his first full album, Let's Talk It Over, in 1979.
While his mix of sweaty funk workouts and soulful ballads didn't find an audience at the height of the disco era (Fields would eventually start working in real estate to support his family during the 1980s), the effort later became a coveted collectors item, selling for hundreds of dollars. Fields would return to music during the '90s, initially recording a couple of synth-heavy soul/blues albums for Ace Records before connecting with Gabriel Roth and Phillip Lehman and their NYC-based imprint Desco Records for a series of singles that were a throwback to Fields' earlier James Brown-inspired work.
That label would evolve, splitting into Daptone Records and Soul Fire Records. The two companies would feature Fields and Sharon Jones on a number of 45s and albums, elevating the singers as two of the foremost classic '60s sound and funk revivalists of the 2000s. Fields has put out a series of outstanding R&B albums, most recently issuing the acclaimed 2016 effort Special Night on Big Crown Records. The singer's uncanny vocal emulation of James Brown led him to provide the singing voice for the Brown biopic Get On Up in 2014. Along with his talented backing band the Expressions, Fields and company have established a well-deserved reputation as a scorching live act that has become a staple of music festivals across the globe, appearing on the main stage at Outside Lands in 2017 and co-headlining a Stern Grove concert with reggae legends Toots and the Maytals two years later.
For his latest album, Fields reunited with Daptone Records co-founder and producer Roth in 2022 to record Sentimental Fool backed by the label's all-star stable of session players for one of the singer's most emotionally charged efforts in years. He and his band stole the show from headliner Thundercat in October at one of the last free San Francisco concerts of the season put on by Noise Pop and the Civic Joy Fund that drew thousands to Golden Gate Park. In addition to this Thursday night show at the Fillmore in San Francisco, the co-headlining tour also stops in Monterey at the Golden State Theatre on Friday.
Lee Fields and Monophonics
Thursday, Jan. 9, 8 p.m. $49.75
The Fillmore
