This jam band just keeps going!
A dynamic funk and jazz fusion quartet known for its marathon late-night sets will keep spreading its tunes this week, playing four shows over three days at Brooklyn Bowl, starting on April 14. The extended series of shows is the next logical development for the New Mastersounds, according to the band’s guitarist.
“We’ve been playing at the Brooklyn Bowl for years. We started out doing one night, expanded it to two nights, then to three nights, and then we threw in the kids’ show,” said Eddie Roberts.
The group, founded in 1999 in Leeds, England, has many longtime fans in Brooklyn, and Roberts said the matinee show on Saturday afternoon is popular with “a lot of our older fans who now have kids,” as well as die-hard fans. “It’s kind of cool — a lot of people come for all four shows.”
The New Mastersounds generally find a packed room when they take the Brooklyn stage, but there was an exception on an earlier visit to the borough.
“We had a problem one time,” Roberts recalled. “We played a Thursday, and it was Hannukah. There were about twenty people there.”
Though the quartet’s sound is rooted in jazz, soul, and funk, they are popular on the jam-band circuit — which is not the contradiction it might seem, said Roberts.
“Especially for me, as I’m from a jazz background, the improvisational side of things is there in our music,” he said. “Combine that with funky grooves that people like dancing to — I think that’s why they like it.”
The New Mastersounds at Brooklyn Bowl [61 Wythe Ave. between N. 11th and N. 12th streets in Williamsburg, (718) 963–3369], www.brook
