Mike Dillon and Punkadelick Featuring Brian Haas and Ginny Mac

City Winery Presents Mike DIllon and Punkadelick Featuring Brian Haas and Ginny Mac on July 17th at 7:00pm

“This fall, Mike Dillon’s Punkadelick returns to Royal Potato Family with Inflorescence, an album of heady, instrumental rock highlighting a band deep in the throes of creative freedom, road tested and wild.

Consisting of 10 tracks in 42-minutes, Inflorescence is expansive and focused, a world where Duke Ellington and Augustus Pablo rub shoulders with crate-digger exotica, the freak-funk of Parliament and the ‘anything fits’ outsider ethos of acid-fried punks like the Meat Puppets.

It’s the sound of six hands creating a world that often sounds like the work of an ensemble three times the size.

What began as a pandemic-era solo project soon evolved into a trio, featuring Dillon (Ricki Lee Jones, Ani DiFranco, Les Claypool) on vibraphone, marimba, Prophet 6, congas, and bongos, Brian Haas (Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey) on Fender Rhodes, piano, bass Moog, melodica and Nikki Glaspie (Beyonce) on drums, cymbals, vocals.

During 2020 and 2021, while many music venues were still shuttered, the group began touring, sweating their way through cuts Dillon and Haas had composed during quarantine writing sessions. Locking in on stage, it quickly became clear the band was functioning at a level which was new — and surprising — even to three live music veterans accustomed to life on the road.

“It became obvious to let this become a collaboration,” Dillon says, phoning from his van while driving between gigs. “A lot of people put together bands and maybe on paper they look incredible. This is really something all three of us are doing because we have so much love for one another and a love for the music that we started creating.”

“There’s only three of us, but we move together like a big, nasty school of fish,” Haas adds, laughing.

During the tail end of a 2021 tour, the band booked time to record with engineer — and functioning fourth band member — Chad Meise, and Inflorescence sprouted.

Opener “Desert Monsoon,” sets the stage with a spiritual-jazz intro of organ, vibraphone, percussion and wordless vocal coos before crackling to life as a swaggering funk strut. The title track, and “Pandas” dig into thick dub textures built around Glaspie’s drumming and Haas’ subwoofer-straining bass synths.

“Apocalypse Daydream,” which appeared as an exotic head-nodder on 2020’s Shoot the Moon (titled “Apocalyptic Daydreams”) is reborn as a meatier jazz-rock slab where Dillon and Haas circle each other like Television performing as a lounge act on a cruise ship sailing seas of psilocybin.

“We’re students of the titans of music,” Dillon says. “Guys who grew up listening to rock ’n’ roll but who love instrumental music. Of course we love all the forefathers of Black American Music, but we also love Zeppelin and Bad Brains — all that comes together in how we approach instrumental creative music.”

While Dillon bristles at the “punk jazz” tag, punk rock remains a core influence to the band, in sound and spirit. “Punk rock is not a prefab thing, it’s about the freedom,” he says, speaking of the band’s “no rules, no genres” approach. “We have no genre restriction in this band, and people who get it really respect that.”

Bending ears and surprising audiences has long been part of Dillon’s MO and Glaspie and Haas act as perfect foils for forays into the weird.

“We try to challenge our listeners,” Dillon says. “We’re touching a nerve with people who maybe don’t want to see the same songs done in the same variations all night long.”

Audiences don’t know whether they are getting a jamband, or a jazz group or a rock band.

“Part of my mission is taking these instruments that are primarily designed for the orchestral or jazz world and taking them to the rock world, the club world, running them through pedals and effects,” he adds. “We’re not afraid to be soft, or to surprise. That’s what we all do in this band — get beyond our own conceptions of what music is supposed to be.”

“We are so blessed and lucky to do what we do for a living — it’s apparent in the music,” Glaspie chimes in. “It doesn’t matter how the day is going, but we get to the club, set up and crush the gig, all the other stuff doesn’t matter. We’re likeminded individuals who love life, love people and want to spread happiness.”

Maybe the greatest example of the band’s punk-steeped sonic free-for-all is “Slowly But Surely,” a track Dillon told Haas to compose as if he were “writing for Queens of the Stone Age.” The song plays like QOTSA with the pedals unplugged, translated to piano runs, vibes and deeply swinging drums — big-riff stoner rock upended and played with huge smiles by America’s premier proponents of the unclassifiable.