Bio:
Bright Dog Red (BDR), an improvising collective from Albany, New York, released Under the Porch on May 20, 2022. Under the Porch, marks the ensemble’s fifth album since signing with Ropeadope in 2018.
Under the Porch features twelve tracks, recorded part by part, layer by layer, edit after edit, over a period spanning late 2020 to late 2021. The album, arguably BDR’s most accessible to date, features a new take on the ensemble’s “signature sound” a mix of “free-form jazz, funk, rock, and hip-hop” (Glide Magazine).
Bright Dog Red, celebrated for “sublimely marrying jazz with hip-hop, funk, and electronic music" (JazzTimes), has long been “a fixture on the NYC jazz and improvisation scene” (Jazz Journal). The group’s "proudly unanchored improvisation" (Downbeat) has been described as “part Ornette Coleman and Prime Time, part Lounge Lizards, part A Tribe Called Quest” (JazzTimes). Others have compared the group to “Mahavishnu Orchestra meets Digable Planets” (Paul Schulman), “Romantic Warrior era Return to Forever” (Rimas e Batidas), and “electronic Ahmad Jamal" (Don Lucoff).
Founded by Joe Pignato, BDR is comprised of a rotating cast of players. In addition to Pignato (drums, percussion, concepts), Under the Porch features Eric Person(soprano and alto saxophones, flute, effects), Tim Lefebvre (electric bass), Tyreek Jackson (electric bass and guitar), Cody Davies (sounds), Mike LaBombard (tenor saxophone, effects), Anthony Berman (acoustic bass), and Matt Coonan (poetry, freestyling, voice).
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
ON UNDER THE PORCH
Glide Magazine:
"Genre-agnostic, uncategorizable, and intensely thrilling.
Blue in Greek Podcast, UK:
Renowned as an improvising collective from New York, Bright Dog Red's new album, 'Under the Porch', continues to present the band's unique vision for an all-encompassing approach to modern-day jazz celebrating inspirations from hip-hop, electronica and spiritual jazz. Thanks to their long-running association with one of the leading labels for contemporary and forward-thinking jazz music, Ropeadope Records, Bright Dog Red continue to deliver music that both challenges and inspires and 'Under the Porch' marks an exciting inclusion within the band's ever-expanding catalogue.
ON IN VIVO
JazzTimes:
“Best kept secret in the avant-jazz underground…BDR has turned up nothing but aces over a rollicking three-album stretch on the Ropeadope label, sublimely marrying jazz with hip-hop, funk, and electronic music…part 1980s-era Ornette Coleman and Prime Time, part Lounge Lizards, part A Tribe Called Quest….The consummate genre-juggling party band.”
Downbeat: "★★★ ½. Proudly unanchored improvisation....an unedited stream of musical consciousness...burns with bop swing. The melodic cogency, rhythmic clarity and sonic ingenuity in these ad hoc live improvisations astounds.”
Glide Magazine: “BDR melds the influences of free-form jazz, funk, rock, and hip-hop into their signature sound. Much is made about improvisation or playing in the moment. While some bands pay casual reference to those phrases, as if to think it will improve their credibility, Bright Dog Red (BDR) makes it their mantra. They are the epitome of in-the-moment playing."
Nu Jazz Sounds, UK: "Amongst the most exciting and creative jazz musicians out there today.”
Blue in Green Podcast, UK: "A fantastic live set...genuinely thrilling."
Best of Jazz: "Improvised music captured live...experimental jazz mixed with hip-hop, electronica, and a touch of krautrock: a refreshing discovery."
ON SOMETHIN' COMES ALONG
Nippertown:
"Best of 2020. How can you NOT love a group that can pair sharp, funny, intelligent lyrics with a borderline-chaotic mix of jazz, rock and hip-hop unmatched by anyone in the game? Bright Dog Red is not a gimmick; it is a force to be reckoned with, and may the reckoning come soon for all of us!"
Albany Times Union:
"Jazz outfit riding creativity high."
SF Gate:
"The most dynamic incarnation of Bright Dog Red yet." -SF Gate, US
Glide Magazine:
"Exciting, mesmerizing...hard-edged free jazz stylings."
Dan Ouellette, Jazz and Beyond Intel, US:
“Ups the ante of free music…bursting with improvisation that defies categorization.”
One Man's Jazz Canada:
"Successfully combines freer improvisation with contemporary street culture."
Constellations Radio, UK:
"Could be album of the year."
Nu Jazz Sounds, UK:
"They are the best at what they do."
Marlbank, UK:
"Spirited, a full throttle go-for-it charge for the line affair."
UK Vibe:
"★★★★★. The music runs a joyous gamut now synonymous with the BDR brand."
The Daily Gazette:
"Packed with improvised and innovative jazz elements, and funk."
Radio Ros Brera, Italia:
“Poetry and jazz play together like neighborhood children.”
Jazz in Family, Italia:
"Could find an important position among the most famous bands playing innovative jazz ."
A Closer Listen, UK:
"Folds in a generous amount of hip-hop, funk, poetry and freestyling. The fact that the band has opened for Parliament Funkadelic says all we need to know."
Bill Barnett, WVUD Radio:
“With two hours of music, this is the most generous helping of skronk-hop you’ll see this year, dig in.”
Joy Sounds Pod Cast:
“Bright Dog Red is making it up as they go along, literally. All of their music is created in the moment, through free improvisation...brings together hip hop, electronica, psychedelia and noise into a spontaneous soundscape taking the listener on a journey through their spur of the moment process.”
Notas Azuis, Portugal:
“It is invention that drives Bright Dog Red, spontaneous and unrepeatable invention, the meeting of brains and lungs, of muscles and hands and throats, of ideas and dreams, of different experiences. Because there is always something that appears, that takes us to some other place. Life, like this music, is made up of a constant flow, with an unstoppable force, like that of the locomotive that adorns the cover of this album.”
ON HOW'S BY YOU?
Modern Drummer:
“A seamless blend of seemingly disparate influences, creating a post-modern mélange that ranges from the familiar to the surprising…thought-provoking, toe-tapping, boundary-defying...inspired music.”
Blue in Green Radio, UK:
“Best of 2019. Experimental and diverse…you ultimately stop trying to comprehend this unravelling psychedelic experience and just learn to accept its mesmerizing nature.”
DJ Nick, UK:
“Best of 2019. Absolutely brilliant!”
Nippertown:
“Best of 2019. Boundary-breaking alt-jazz improv.”
Glide Magazine:
“Fiery…free-flowing and immersive. Rhyming, noise and electronics weave in and out.”
Radio Le Grigri, France:
“Un chien nourri au hip-hop, à l’electro, au jazz et qui rappe ; assurément un chien d’avant-garde A dope album!” [“A dog fed hip-hop, electro, jazz and rapping; certainly an avant-garde dog. A dope album!”]
The Bolg:
“A stellar beatnik odyssey, filled with risks, that grows and unfurls more and more after each spin…a big musical Ouija board.”
Start-FM 94.2, Vilnius, Lithuania:
“What happens when you mix spontaneous jazz, hip-hop, poetry, psychedelics and noise? Bright Dog Red. Never stops evolving – just like we all should.”
Nu Jazz Sounds, UK:
“Spirited and free forming jazz with a bit of electronica and hip hop thrown in for good measure!”
ON MEANS TO THE ENDS
Nippertown:
“Divine madness…a brilliant package of vibrant, intricate, surprising pieces.”
Jazz Journal, UK:
“An enjoyable jazz and ‘hip-pop’ hybrid…a seamless and well-crafted product.”
Blue in Green Radio, UK:
“Spirited and inspired jazz that skillfully weaves in additional elements of electronica and hip-hop.”
DJ Nick, UK:
“Wild, refreshing, creative music. A sense of mystery because you don’t know where it’s going, where it’s going to end up, but it takes you on a journey. Cracking good music.”
Green Arrow Radio:
“Doesn’t fit into anything, and that’s just fine! So much going on…takes many, many listens before you feel like you’re not getting that one off, ‘this is mine,’ experience… an incredible capture.”
ON BRIGHT DOG RED
Blue in Green Radio, UK:
"Theirs is an unrivalled approach to contemporary jazz.”
Modern Drummer:
"Jazz that draws on psychedelic, electronic soundscapes, improvised hip-hop, funk, and more."
Jazzwise, UK:
"Mash-up of Maceo-style funk, old-school rap and jazz-rock riffage."
Jazz Journal, UK:
“Starting as a jazz-meets-hip-hop jam band with a loosely-defined membership, Bright Dog Red has become a fixture on the NYC jazz and improvisation scene.”
UK Vibe:
“Inventive and Bold.”
The Alt Weekly:
“An innovative and psychedelic mesh of jazz, hip-hop and electronica.”
The Bolg:
“Put Albany’s Bright Dog Red on your radar as this jazzy psychedelic hip hop posse has potential for some progressive golden era goodness.”
Louis Marks, CEO Ropeadope Records:
“Bright Dog Red is perhaps the most unique band to grace the halls of Ropeadope, and that’s quite an accomplishment. Bright Dog Red hits the stage without charts or set list – they simply start playing and improvise, taking cues from each other and from the audience and room. It’s adventurous, and due to the skill and rapport of the players, surprisingly cohesive.”
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).