Tag: Davidmcgraw

Album of the Week, November 8, 2025

Delvon Lamarr is one of many artists who have benefited from exposure on KEXP (about which I’ve written many times before). In this particular case, though, his career was significantly boosted. The band had a set they were playing on KEXP’s Upstream Festival in May 2017, and they stopped by the studio to warm up. KEXP’s camera crew happened to catch the warm up session, and posted it to YouTube. Eleven million views later, the band’s trajectory was in a new orbit. Sometimes it happens like that.

KEXP came on board with Colemine Records to issue the record of the live performance, which debuted on Record Store Day in 2018. It features a few of the performances from that live video plus some more, and stands as a gripping testament of the power of R&B powered funk to “move… and remove, dig?”

“Move On Up” is one of the tracks from the warm-up show; in the audio from YouTube, Lamarr notes “We’re going to start with a tune that should be familiar to most of you guys” before launching with the band into the Curtis Mayfield banger. The tune starts with just Jimmy James, sketching out the chords, before Lamarr enters on a crescendoing chord and David McGraw crashes out the beat. The playing is energetic and forthright; it’s impossible to hear and not dance.

“Memphis” is a laid-back version of the original from Close But No Cigar. Where the original could occasionally feel formulaic, here the band is tight and relaxed, not giving the guitar lick on the chorus until the second repetition. Lamarr’s solo swerves up into the upper range of the instrument, embracing different tempi (at one point almost grinding to a stop even as the guitar and drums carry forward) and generally laying down the funk. And then there’s Jimmy James. The guitar solo on “Memphis” is probably worth four to six million of the 11 million YouTube views that this performance racked up. Starting out with a staccato riff, James runs through triplets and eighth note runs before taking off into outer space. At one point you can clearly hear what sounds for all the world like a power bass player; the YouTube video pans down from the keyboard to show Lamarr knocking that bass line out with his left stockinged foot on the pedals. The whole thing is a piece of casually funky brilliance.

“South Leo St. Stomp,” called “Untitled” in the YouTube video, starts out immediately from “Memphis” with a steady four-four beat from McGraw, turning into a little cha-cha and syncopated funk as Lamarr and James enter. This is the video that prompted a YouTube commenter to post, “My watch just asked the drummer what the time is”—he’s so in the pocket, so flawlessly on, that it’s like hearing a funky, funky metronome. Jimmy James sounds more like Jimi Hendrix on this one, with the guitar threatening to take off at one point, but everything circles back to the relaxed beat once more to bring it to a close. The whole time, there have been more and more people coming up outside the windows of the performance space to listen, including a couple of very young listeners excitedly talking with their grown-ups about the sound.

The second half is devoted to the band’s actual Upstream Festival set, starting with “Concussion.” This version of the band’s debut single clocks in at a tight 4:27 but feels more laid back than the record version, between McGraw’s deeply in-the-pocket drumming and James’ mellow but focused guitar. Lamarr’s organ still has that perfect rhythm underneath, but he finds more melodic room in the solo. Jimmy James gives us a perfectly executed single-verse solo that comes in like a helicopter over the jungle to lay down bursts of funk. He’s in, freaky, and right back out. It feels like a well-worn pair of jeans.

Lamarr introduces “I Don’t Want to Play That” as “another new song, brand new… like Monday new.” The original is a deeply groovy ballad that feels like a tango in hip-huggers, thanks to the intersection between the band’s tight rhythm and the bluesy minor melodic solo from Lamarr. The band rolls right into “Tacoma Black Party,” an original named after a slip of the lip from Lamarr’s manager (and wife) Amy Novo. A feature for Jimmy James, the tune builds to a climax in the first chorus with his guitar climbing to the fifth and sixth of the scale, and then the whole band dropping out save for a few quiet notes in the organ, climbing up the scales. James melts the guitar, and our faces, with another Hendrix solo that crashes down octaves, briefly becomes polychordal, and slides all the way down to the bottom of his range until the band circles back around to the close.

The band closes with a properly funky version of Freddie Wilson’s “Top Going Down, Bottom Going Up,” originally made famous by Nathan Bartell. The band is totally locked in, with James giving a tight riff around the edges of the chorus but otherwise staying in support mode for this one. A monstrous solo from Lamarr has the crowd dancing all the way to the end, when James closes with a minor-key nod to “Jingle Bells.”

YouTube took the solidly soulful throwback sound of Lamarr and his band and made them minor stars. We’ll hear more from the band next week as things start to change.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: There can’t be any bonus better than that 2017 warm-up session, so here it is! The first half of the record was recorded as one single video (the 11-million view one, now up above 15 million), but the second half performances are available as individual videos as well. Watch ’em in order for the whole show, minus a little of the linking chatter.

Album of the Week, November 1, 2025

After fusion and jazz-funk took some of the steam out of the organ combo market in the 1970s, the neo-trad movement spearheaded by Wynton Marsalis similarly had the jazz-record-buying public focused elsewhere in the 1980s and 1990s. But the organ combo never went away, and new players continued to emerge, including the late great Joey DeFrancesco in the late 1980s through the 2010s. New players continued to emerge, including today’s artist.

During this period, something else was happening: internet distribution of music. Music blogs and recommendation feeds helped formerly niche artists find audiences. And distribution platforms like Spotify and Bandcamp helped musicians get access to their music, whether streaming or via vinyl. Into this market (and onto Bandcamp) stepped Delvon Lamarr and his organ trio. Based in Seattle, Lamarr had played in a number of bands including the now-defunct jazz-funk combo Megatron before forming his organ trio in 2015 with guitarist Jimmy James and what would turn out (spoiler alert) to be a revolving door of drummers. For the first album, that was Seattle-based David McGraw.

The band’s manager (and Lamarr’s wife) Amy Novo learned about Loveland, Ohio’s Colemine records and its founder Terry Cole from another Colemine act, and McGraw brought their tracks over. Cole tested the tracks in his record shop, and decided to release the album after seeing fifteen or twenty patrons bob their heads to the music and then ask “Who is this?” 

“Concussion” comes out of the gates swinging hard. Lamarr plays the melody in the mid to low range, as Jimmy Smith did, but unlike his predecessor gives a strong voice to guitarist Jimmy James in the arrangement. The two play in a tight combo, closing the head out with two single notes. Lamarr’s solo stays in the midrange, iterating over the bluesy chord changes and powering up on his second repetition to something more fiery but still very much in the pocket. Jimmy James’ guitar solo, on the other hand, takes off like the shuddering rotors of a helicopter, playing with time over the bursts of sound from the organ and McGraw’s drums. 

“Little Booker T”  is a nod to one of Lamarr’s major non-jazz influences, Booker T and the MGs. The combo gives a good impression of the laid-back vibes of the great Stax house band, complete with a pretty great bass line courtesy of Lamarr’s organ.  The laid-back vibe continues with a completely different beat in “Ain’t It Funky,” a tribute to the great 1970 line-up of James Brown’s JBs. Jimmy James plays a great Catfish Collins impression, and Lamarr picks up the groove as James takes a ripping solo. The only minus is McGraw’s drumming—while in the pocket, it lacks some of the originality and bounce of a Bernard Purdie.

“Close But No Cigar” takes Stax as its inspiration, with a melody slightly reminiscent of Jean Knight’s “Mr. Big Stuff.” Lamarr slows the melody down in the chorus even as the groove continues. There’s a little melodic development here but that’s almost beside the point; this is grimy, funky good-time dance music, and the syncopated B melody that seems designed for whiplash-inducing head-nodding only reinforces the point. The John Patton classic “Memphis” (from a 1969-1970 album that went unreleased until 1996) is an opportunity for McGraw to show off his skills, and he rises to the occasion, with a funky, bouncy beat. We’re back in Stax territory again, as the name suggests, and the chorus, alternating between the tonic and supertonic chords, reinforces the funky energy.

“Al Greenery” tips the hat to the Reverend Al circa “Love and Happiness”—in fact, making a groove out of the first four measures of the song. This one definitely leans more pop; Jimmy James doesn’t get much of a chance to go off the reservation here. That’s reserved for Lamarr in “Can I Change My Mind,” a bright and sunny number written by Carl Wolfolk and Barry Despenza and debuted by Tyrone Davis in 1969 that allows both organist and guitarist to add a little sunny soul to the mix, with Lamarr giving by far the most joyous expression on the record.

“Between the Mustard and the Mayo” references both the infamous “sandwich cover” of Jimmy & Wes: The Dynamic Duo and a bit of the mid-1960s arrangements by both Oliver Nelson and Lalo Schifrin that we have heard in earlier columns. Lamarr is flat out here, improvising at maximum velocity as James and McGraw groove hard underneath him. “Raymond Brings the Greens” gets a fiercely greasy groove courtesy of James and a stumbling McGraw drum beat, but the band isn’t above a wink as James tosses in a riff from “The Man Who Sold the World” in his solo.

The Burt Bacharach/Hal David classic “Walk On By” closes us out with an end-of-the-evening vibe: no crazy solos, no Isaac Hayes psychedelic soul, just the band giving their best groove over a bashing drum part from McGraw. Lamarr is the best part of this album closer, leaning into the chords at the chorus with a weeping expressiveness. It’s time to go, he seems to say, but you’ll be back.

Delvon Lamarr and his band hit something just right with this debut album, proving that there was an audience for just plain fun jazz and soul played with heart. The trio would go on to record more; we’ll hear a live show from them next week.

You can listen to this week’s album here:

BONUS: Along with the aforementioned live show, the band hit the road to promote the album. You can skip the first 2:50, though the interview is interesting enough, to watch the band tear into “Close but No Cigar” live: