Bass CDs
New Album: Mark Egan, Cross Currents
Bassist Mark Egan to release “Cross Currents” with Shawn Pelton and Shane Theriot – Release Date: March 7th, 2024…
After five decades of touring and recording as an in-demand sideman and leader in his own right, acclaimed bassist Mark Egan has finally released an album that encapsulates his myriad of musical influences in one all-encompassing package. “In many ways this is a new production sound for me,” said the bassist who studied privately with Jaco Pastorius during the mid ‘70s while attending the University of Florida before becoming a charter member of The Pat Metheny Group. “My early influences are from playing r&b, soul and rock before becoming indoctrinated into jazz in the Miami years.
This trio record explores those rootsy R&B funk-rock grooves coupled with my jazz and world sensibilities and utilizes the various fretted and fretless basses that I’ve worked with over the years. It’s a culmination of the many worlds of my experiences and is the reason that it’s titled Cross Currents.”
Completing this potent trio with Egan are drummer Shawn Pelton (a 30-year veteran of the Saturday Night Live band and first-call New York City studio player who has recorded with everyone from Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart and Bruce Springsteen to Elton John, Billy Joel, Van Morrison, Sheryl Crow, David Byrne, Pink and Luciano Pavarotti) and Louisiana-born guitarist Shane Theriot (musical director for Hall & Oates who has also recorded and/or performed with The Neville Brothers, Dr. John, Boz Scaggs, Allen Toussaint, Rickie Lee Jones, Willie Nelson and Todd Rundgren).
Together they cut a wide stylistic swath on Cross Currents, from funk (‘Homebrew’, ‘Pocket Call’) to ambient (‘Big Sky’) to swamp rock (‘Gulf Stream’), second-line (‘Ponchatrain’) and ballads (the Jimi Hendrix flavored ‘Sand Castles’ and the moody ‘Roll With It’) with allusions to Cajun (‘Nonc Rodell’) and Indian Raga (‘Eastern Blue’).
Recorded at Power Station New England in Waterford, CT (a perfect replica of the storied New York City recording studio where Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, David Bowie, Madonna, Sting, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Mayer recorded iconic albums), Cross Currents is Egan’s most versatile and ambitious offering to date. While his past outings as a leader, like 2006’s As We Speak, 2010’s Truth Be Told, 2014’s About Now and Direction Home, 2018’s Dreaming Spirits and 2020’s Electric Blue, have been primarily organic trio and duo affairs, Cross Currents is a power trio with orchestrated layers of rhythms and textures by the participants.
“The intent of this recording was to capture the interplay and energy of the trio and orchestrate it by adding additional guitars, bass and percussion to enhance what the songs were calling for.
Everyone had so many great ideas for orchestrating and arranging the material. The record has electric and acoustic guitar as well as bass and percussion overdubs. We wanted to make atmospheric pads to create a backdrop for us to improvise over. Once I had decided on recording this trio format I spent nine months of composing and arranging the compositions. Shane and Shawn also spent a lot of time conceptualizing and contributing songs. We had three days to record and orchestrate the eleven compositions so the preproduction allowed us to have the time to be creative in the studio and focus on the group interplay and soloing.”
For Egan, interplay and soloing means digging down on his fretted bass
groove lines to lock with the rhythm section and using his fretless electric bass for his signature singing sound that has graced his own recordings since 1985’s groundbreaking and decidedly bass-centric Mosaic. That quality comes across throughout Cross Currents and is particularly evident with him carrying the melody on tunes like ‘Gulf Stream’, ‘Big Sky’, ‘Pocket Call’ and the title track or by his uncommonly lyrical improvising on tunes like ‘Ponchatrain’, ‘Homebrew’, ‘Sunflower’ and ‘Eastern Blue’.
The bassist had high praise for his comrades Shawn and Shane on Cross Currents. “They both came very prepared for the sessions. I had sent them demos along with arrangements with suggestions for solo sections and overdub possibilities, and we rehearsed one day before going into the studio to work things out. Shane and Shawn both brought so much to the table and did their homework by creating and practicing grooves, melodies and instrument choices as well as coming up with great orchestration ideas. They are both so fundamentally strong in everything they do that it made the recording process creative and a lot of fun.”
Egan had previously recorded with Theriot on the bassist’s 2018 album, Dreaming Spirits, an Indian flavored trio project with tabla player/percussionist Arjun Bruggeman. “I loved Shane’s contribution on Dreaming Spirits and thought he would be a perfect fit for the trio on Cross Currents. And though Shawn and I have played together on many sessions in New York over the years, he had never played on any of my records before.”
The three players had actually first established some chemistry on a show backing NYC poet Frank Messina back in pre-pandemic times. “This was late 2019, before the COVID shut down,” Egan recalled. “Frank asked me to recommend people for this show that he was performing in New York City and I recommended Shane and Shawn. There was no rehearsal but just a very loose structure to it all with a lot of improvisation. Frank gave us a lot of room to improvise and play off of his poetry. At one point that evening we were playing trio — just Shane, Shawn and myself. That was the ‘light bulb moment’ for me, when I thought, this is very happening. I want to record a project with this trio. In the fall of 2022 I was in touch with Shane and Shawn about recording a trio project and I started writing songs for the group. Shane also sent me a few of his songs that inspired me to write others in a similar style. We co-wrote ‘Big Sky’ as Shane sent me the song as a demo with acoustic guitar chords and a groove and I wrote a melody and added an extended section for his acoustic guitar solo. Shane also contributed ‘Ponchatrain’, ‘Sunflower’ and ‘Homebrew’. Shawn contributed ‘Nonc Rodell’ which is a tribute to his uncle.
‘Nonc Rodell’ showcases Shawn as a world class groove drummer as well as the depth of his creative drumming abilities. Shawn pre recorded his tracks at his studio with his drums, squeezebox (accordion), and added tenor guitar parts as well. We brought those tracks into Power Station New England studio and Shane and I added guitars and basses on top of Shawn’s prerecorded tracks. It’s a very creative track that features Shawn’s amazing drumming and I love it.”
An in-demand New York City studio musician who has played on multi-gold and platinum-selling recordings by Sting, Arcadia, Marc Cohn, GRP Christmas, Mecano and Joan Osborne, Egan has also recorded with a wide variety of artists from pop stars like Roger Daltry, Sophie B. Hawkins, Marianne Faithfull, Judy Collins, Cyndi Lauper and Art Garfunkel to jazz notables like David Sanborn, John McLaughlin, John Abercrombie, Randy Brecker, Gato Barbieri, Freddy Cole, Pat Martino, Jim Hall, Joe Beck, Mark Murphy and Larry Coryell. A member of the Gil Evans Orchestra for 13 years, he has 14 albums as a leader to his credit and another 10 as a co-leader of Elements, the fusion band he formed in 1982 with his Pat Metheny Group bandmate, drummer Danny Gottlieb.
And now Cross Currents, on his own Wavetone label, may be his crowning achievement to date as Egan continues to push the boundaries of his creativity.
For more information visit markegan.com
Bass CDs
New Album: Zev Feldman’s Time Traveler Recordings’ Buster Williams ‘Pinnacle’ Muse Catalog Reissue
A precious, but previously elusive gem by the brilliant bass player Buster Williams will re-enter the jazz firmament with Time Traveler Recordings’ April 18 reissue of Pinnacle, the NEA Jazz Master’s celebrated 1975 debut album as a leader.
The package, an exclusive RSD release on LP, is being reissued for the very first time since its original release. It is the latest installment in TTR’s Muse Master Edition Series, unearthing the long-lost masterworks from the catalog of the historic Muse Records. The series is a collaboration with Virgin Music Group and Craft Recordings, spearheaded by TTR co-founder, producer and “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman.
Remastered AAA directly from the original analog tapes by Matthew Lutthans at the Mastering Lab in Salina, Kansas, Pinnacle is pressed on 180-gram vinyl by Optimal. It will be issued in a hand-numbered, high-gloss tip-on sleeve, featuring a new liner essay by journalist Mike Flynn and a rare period photograph of Williams by Raymond Ross. The package also includes the original 1975 notes by Elliot Meadow who produced the original session which was recorded at Blue Rock Studios in NYC.
Thirty-three years old at the time of these August 1975 sessions, Camden, New Jersey native Charles Anthony “Buster” Williams was already an acclaimed and in-demand jazz bassist. He’d spent most of the 1960s touring and recording with Nancy Wilson, also freelancing for the likes of the Jazz Crusaders, Harold Land, and the Miles Davis Quintet—substituting for Ron Carter for several months in 1967—where he met and worked with Herbie Hancock. Williams joined Hancock’s Mwandishi band in 1971, placing him on the cutting edge of the new jazz fusion movement.
Pinnacle, recorded after Mwandishi’s breakup, finds Williams still very much informed by that idiom of funky, experimental jazz. The band includes fellow Mwandishi alum Billy Hart on drums and fellow Miles veteran Sonny Fortune on soprano saxophone and flute, along with legendary trumpeter Woody Shaw and a venturesome crew including saxophonist Earl Turbinton, keyboardist Onaje Allan Gumbs and percussionist Guilherme Franco. (Vocalists Suzanne Klewan and Marcus also join on two tracks.)
Williams blazed new trails in the use of electric bass in jazz: “A pioneer among jazz doublers—musicians equally adept on upright and electric bass,” notes Flynn in his new essay. But, while he features his Fender electric bass on the thumping opener “The Hump,” on most of the album Williams plays the acoustic upright bass that had always been his first love. It anchors the darker, funkier journeys the band takes on “Pinnacle” and “Batuki” and sets the swinging tone for the acoustic numbers, the deep spiritual jazz “Noble Eagle” and the breezy, playful “Tayamisha.”
“What I love about the acoustic bass is what I have to do to get music out of it,” Williams muses. “The sound I get depends all on me, not the help of an amp. The instrument relates to my heart; it’s alive, it has emotion, it’s not just a piece of wood.”
“Bass players are often described—perhaps unfairly—as the anchor of the band,” writes Flynn. “But in the hands of a master like Buster Williams, the bass becomes something much more: the engine, the heartbeat, the mellifluous core driving the music forward.”
Williams composed four of the album’s five tracks, making Pinnacle a brilliant first showcase for his writing as well as his playing and bandleading. “Buster’s writing abilities have not gone unnoticed in the past,” observes Meadows in his original liner notes for the album. “The writing for this date is fresh and varied. ‘The Hump,’ which should make you get up and do something, contrasts with the haunting serenity of the title song. Then ‘Tayamisha’ (named for Buster’s daughter) is light and airy as opposed to the intensity of ‘Noble Ego.’”
A prophetic release, Pinnacle forecasts the subsequent 50 years that Williams has spent balancing forward-looking musical adventures with the bounty and rigor of the tradition. “The title says it all,” writes Flynn. “Pinnacle wasn’t just a debut. It was a statement of arrival—an artist stepping forward from a prolific past into a fearless, unbounded future.” And, under the curation of Time Traveler’s Muse Master Edition Series, it now sounds better than ever.
Monk con Clave is the new album from the Carlos Henriquez Big Band, out now! Therein, bassist and bandleader Carlos Henriquez roots the large-ensemble recording in his long relationship with the work of Thelonious Monk and the cultural history of San Juan Hill.
He brings together a multigenerational band drawn from members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and its extended community, including percussionist Pedrito Martínez, trumpeter Mike Rodriguez, pianists Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Osmany Paredes, and Robert Rodriguez, vocalist Anthony Almonte, flutist and vocalist Jeremy Bosch. The project places Monk’s compositions beside original works shaped by Bronx memory and Nuyorican identity.
Few figures in modern art carry the singular presence of Thelonious Monk. His unmistakable melodic contours, harmonic tensions, and rhythmic logic continue to define the jazz repertoire, with musicians reinterpreting his work across generations. Monk lived in Manhattan’s San Juan Hill neighborhood before its disappearance during the construction of Lincoln Center, and his sound still carries the imprint of that vanished New York community.
Henriquez’s work as a bassist, composer, and bandleader has drawn sustained critical recognition across the jazz world. JazzTimes has praised his playing as “clean, crisp and to-the-point…jet fuel for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra,” while noting that “anyone surprised by the depth and breadth of Henriquez’s talents simply hasn’t been paying attention.” DownBeat has described him as “an emerging master in the Latin jazz idiom,” and WRTI has called his Grammy-nominated album The South Bronx Story “a terrific album,” highlighting his rare ability to unite Afro-Latin clave and jazz swing with few peers.
Henriquez built his artistic life through decades at Jazz at Lincoln Center. He joined the organization in the late 1990s as a teenager performing with Wynton Marsalis, became a full-time orchestra member, and spent years touring, recording, arranging, curating, and directing performances. “It’s almost like a mini Wynton Marsalis throughout those 30 years,” he says. “My participation there has been basically my whole life. It’s my home and a place where I’m gonna continue to develop and to lead.”
Monk’s voice has remained central to that life. “Something stood out,” Henriquez says. “It made me feel comfortable. It made me feel like I also had a voice in this music.” He hears Monk’s rhythmic language through his own identity as “a Nuyorican — somebody born in New York City whose parents are from Puerto Rico.” The music on Monk con Clave grew from that connection because he “was already listening to his music and very attracted to his uniqueness and him being himself.”
Henriquez assembled the band for what he calls “a great moment for me, especially for this project.” The session carried humor and familiarity. “Everybody’s on point. If you mess up a note, everybody starts jumping on you. That’s the fun part… all the talking amongst friends to keep our spirits and our attention span as high as possible.” During one solo, Rubalcaba stunned the room so completely that the musicians looked around “like they saw a ghost, like they saw an alien.”
The album opens with “Round Midnight,” where, Henriquez says, Rubalcaba’s playing “becomes water and takes the shape of whatever he wants to do.” “I Mean You” captures what Henriquez calls “the vibe of Afro-Cuban music at its best.”
“El Son De Teo” unfolds through a slow Son atmosphere connecting the homage to Teo Macero, creating “a real Son vibe.” His original composition “San Juan Hill” reflects “the ups and downs of being Black American and Puerto Rican Latino during the transition period, with Robert Moses having to move people out of their locations.” On “Ugly Beauty,” Henriquez shifts Monk’s triple meter into four and draws on the ballad language of Beny Moré, while a vocal performance by Anthony Almonte delivers what he describes as “luscious sounds.”
“Evidence of Four and One” references Monk’s classic compositions “Evidence,” first recorded in 1948, and “Four in One,” a formally unusual work from 1951. Here Henriquez manages to combine both tunes as if it were one. Built on rapid sixteenth-note with both melodic lines overlapping. “Raise Four” follows the lineage of Machito and Chico O’Farrill through a six-eight pulse and the explosion of Pedro Martinez & Jesus Ricardo.
“Green Chimneys” carries a Mozambique feel that features piccolo flute and bass on the melody. “Who Knows” stands as “a reflection of people I look up to — Tito Puente, Machito, Chico O’Farrill — Afro-Cuban and Afro-Puerto Rican.” The closing “Plena Azul Blue Monk” draws on Puerto Rican plena tradition, where “the trombone just playing the melody” evokes figures such as Papa Vázquez, William Cepeda, and Rafael Hernández.
For Henriquez, the music returns to the place that shaped him.
Well-respected roots rock/Americana sidemen; drummer JIMMY LESTER (Billy Joe Shaver, Webb Wilder, Los Straitjackets), bass player/songwriter/singer/bandleader MARK W. WINCHESTER (Planet Rockers, EmmyLou Harris, Brian Setzer), and keyboard player KEVIN MCKENDREE (Lee Roy Parnell, Delbert McClinton, Brian Setzer) form super-groove-group LESTER WINCHESTER MCKENDREE to go it alone, together, on their debut collaborative release, THEY GOT IT ALL (Times Three Records/MAY 29, 2026).
The drum, bass and piano (with vocal) trio recorded over two “live” days at McKendree’s Rock House studio in Franklin, TN early this year, focusing on a collection of Winchester’s original songs the three had been performing together on local club dates, brand new material (the unique origins of which we’ll get to), as well as two instrumentals collaboratively conjured in the studio.
Originally feeling the power of their locked-in, feel-based natural groove while backing E. Street Band bassist Garry Tallent on his solo album and brief tour in 2017, Winchester says he wanted to feel that again. “On that tour, Garry would let his musicians do an original song or two of their own, and I never forgot how great it felt and sounded to sing my songs with Kevin and Jimmy, or how Jimmy and I backed Kevin’s instrumental piano romps.”
In recent years, as Lester Winchester McKendree began performing live, an evolution began taking place with regard to Winchester’s instrument of choice. “I was changing strings one day and started thinking about the band Morphine, and how their frontman Mark Sandman, rest in peace, played a 2-string bass. So I took a YouTube deep dive, got inspired, and only put two strings back on my own bass”, Winchester explains. The sonically unique, melodically interesting result made the decision for the band to record an album a no-brainer.
Songwriters will often say a guitar new to them will “have songs in it”, or that writing on an instrument one is not totally familiar with can open up new creative possibilities. Winchester described it this way: “Songs just started falling out of that thing. Sandman played with a slide, but I just used my long fingers. The 2-String is tuned in fifths, and I started finding melodies and riffs, and for the first time ever, really, wrote all the music to pieces before any lyrics came.”
About a year after stringing his own bass with only two, Eastwood Guitars serendipitously (for Winchester) brought to market a replica “Sandman Model” 2-String bass. Winchester immediately ordered one. “When I got it, it was tuned in a different key than my Silvertone, but sure enough, songs started falling outta that thing too.” The songs that ‘fell out’ of that Sandman Model 2-String bass, by way of Winchester’s creative mind, make up the bulk of THEY GOT IT ALL, and the sparse fire and crisp energy that McKendree’s piano and Lester’s drumming bring to these tunes infuses them with, well, ‘cool’. The 2-String bass running separately, but simultaneously through bass and guitar amps, gives the trio a guitarish crunchiness you wouldn’t expect with no 6-stringer in the fold.
All three of these accomplished musicians’ careers started commingling in Nashville in the late 1980s.
JIMMY LESTER, a Nashville, TN native, moved from Billy Joe Shaver’s band to the original drum chair for Webb Wilder and the Beatnecks. Lester also established himself as a master of surf-rock drum style as a founding member of Los Straightjackets, which coincided with the
formation of roots rock cult hero band The Planet Rockers, of which Winchester was a founding member on upright bass.
Originally from Monroe, NC, MARK W. WINCHESTER moved to Nashville in 1988. He went on to join Emmylou Harris’ Nash Ramblers, before a stint as a Music Row staff songwriter, where he penned a hit for Randy Travis (‘Would I?’). He later joined the Brian Setzer Orchestra, and has had several of his songs recorded by Setzer, including ‘Rooster Rock’ on which Setzer had Winchester sing lead vocal.
KEVIN McKENDREE, from the Washington D.C. area, came to Nashville as the piano man for Lee Roy Parnell and quickly established himself as a real-deal roots and blues keyboardist, eventually playing on multiple Grammy-winning albums. McKendree (as well as Winchester) played with blues mastermind Mike Henderson, Brian Setzer’s Rock-A-Billy Riot, and The Brian Setzer Orchestra. McKendree’s 20+ year partnership with Delbert McClinton, as musician/co-writer/producer/engineer, led to the 2020 Grammy-winning McClinton album TALL, DARK, & HANDSOME -recorded by McKendree at his Rock House studio.
It was there at the Rock House, with McKendree on keys and control board, that he, Lester, and Winchester, with no bosses, no agenda, and no pressure, laid down the live, loose, properly boned, expertly fleshed, lyrically interesting, groovy aural document that is THEY GOT IT ALL.
Maybe they do.
Visit online at www.markwwinchester.com
Oteil Burbridge & Lamar Williams Jr. Champion Love Over Hate in New Single “Hush” | New Album ‘The Offering’ Out May 1.
Bassist Oteil Burbridge and vocalist Lamar Williams Jr. continue the rollout of their forthcoming collaborative album The Offering, with the release of its second single, “Hush”. A slow-burning Southern soul meditation rooted in love, peace, and emotional clarity, the track is a centerpiece on the album with a potent, thematic statement, in Williams’ words to “block out all of that nonsense” and “remember that there is more love in the world than hate.” The full-length album arrives May 1 via Flóki Studios, recorded on Iceland’s northern coast and produced by drummer, engineer, and Soulive co-founder Alan Evans.
While much of The Offering grew out of Burbridge’s banjo-based writing, “Hush” emerged from he and Williams’ shaping a deliberate sonic vision. Burbridge says they were “trying to capture a more old school Memphis, Macon, Muscle Shoals vibe,” leaning into a Southern soul feel that fits Williams’s phrasing. The end result is a song that is unhurried with a deep pocket that allows the groove and the song’s message breathe and stand at the forefront.
The album features an all-star lineup of drummer John Morgan Kimock, percussionist Weedie Braimah, organist Melvin Seals of the Jerry Garcia Band, pianist and violinist Jason Crosby, guitarists Tom Guarna and Jaden Lehman — musicians whose overlapping histories connect the Allman Brothers Band, Dead & Company, the Jerry Garcia Band, Soulive, and West African percussion traditions.
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Pops Magellan unveils her debut live EP, DAMAGE (Live at EastWest Studios), a three-track performance project recorded at the legendary EastWest Studios. Captured in Studio One using one-take camera performance, the session offers a raw and intentional introduction to Magellan’s artistic world as a solo artist, bandleader, and producer.
The live EP features three compositions from her DAMAGE era:
“Misunderstood,” featuring Taylor Graves and Robert Sput Searight
“Deep Thoughts,” featuring Noa Kahn
“Drive Complaining,” featuring Robert Sput Searight and Artur Menezes
Originally released as a series of live performance videos on YouTube, the session now lives as a body of work, highlighting Magellan’s ability to merge high-level musicianship with groove-driven, emotionally resonant compositions. Each track unfolds as a conversation between players, balancing technical precision with spontaneity.
Recorded in a single day at EastWest, the session reflects Magellan’s commitment to capturing music in its most honest form. With a focus on raw live interplay, DAMAGE (Live at EastWest Studios) sets a clear tone: this is an artist building her identity in real time.
The session features a handpicked group of collaborators. Robert Searight, founding member of Ghost-Note, brings his signature groove, alongside virtuoso Noa Kahn, acclaimed guitarist Artur Menezes, and Grammy winner Taylor Graves, who co-produced two songs on the original EP.
“It was a way to start a strong foundation for the world I’m building.” says Pops. “I wanted to make something beautiful, strong, and honest, something I’d be proud of looking back.”
Pops leads every aspect of the project, from curating collaborators to shaping the sonic and visual identity. The result is a refined yet powerful debut live statement that positions her at the intersection of musicianship, artistry, and modern performance culture.
With more music on the way and live shows to be announced soon, DAMAGE (Live at EastWest Studios) marks the beginning of a larger vision still unfolding.
Stream DAMAGE (Live at EastWest Studios) HERE
Watch the Live Session HERE
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