The Budos Band

Variety Playhouse, Atlanta | 11/2/19

By Jamie Martin

November 3^rd, 2019

A Fucking Cobra!

The last time this surly crew slithered onto an Atlanta stage, the riser was less than twelve inches above the floor, barely supporting the band's sprawling ten members. The EARL's tiny den was packed that night, and the Budos Band seemed to take up half the room themselves, tightly twisted into a dark corner with low ceilings.

After darting through their first few frenetic numbers from 2010's Budos Band III, baritone saxophonist, Jared Tankel, asked the crowd: "What was on the cover of our last album?"

"A fucking SCORPION!" he barked in unison with 300 entranced fans.

"And what's on the cover of our new album?"

"A FUCKING COBRA!!!" the chorus responded.

Two albums and eight years later, Staten Island's mammoth Afro-Soul sound returned to Atlanta last night, squeezing a sold-out Variety Playhouse, and striking with an electric venom. One thousand people writhing in a dark, dense mass.

MOONLIGHTING

After five albums with Daptone Records (home of Sharon Jones, Lee Fields, Antibalas, and the Menahan Street Band), the Budos have earned an international reputation and toured the world...but they haven't quit their day jobs: Tankel is a Beverly Hills media attorney, specializing in recording contracts; lunatic percussionist John Carbonella is a web developer; trumpet player, Andrew Greene is an Educational Technologist at NYU.

HEAVY SOUL

Describing themselves as "70's psychedelic instrumental music," the Budos Band weave 60s soul, deep funk, Ethiopian horns, and—increasingly since The Budos Band III—heavy-metal into thick, muscular coils, tightly wound, and slowly unwinding.

Hell's House Band

Ending with a fat and faithful Immigrant Song, followed by a molasses-thick Keep Me Hanging On (more Vanilla Fudge than Supremes), the Budos have evolved beyond the deep, melodic Ethiopiques of Mulatu Astake that dominated their first three albums. Their sound is ominously darker, heavier, grander.