World-beaters: Nation Beat brings its global groove to NYC’s Joe’s Pub for album release show
nypost.comNation Beat, their globe-trotting groove has crossed not only countries, but continents.And the band’s Brazil-to-New Orleans flight of beats and brass will stop at NYC’s Joe’s Pub on Saturday for an album release show celebrating their fifth LP, “Archaic Humans.”“We’ve been around for a minute, and in the early years, they were the first kind of established performance space that we did in New York City,” bandleader and drummer/percussionist Scott Kettner told The Post. “And they’ve always supported us through all these years.“So it’s great to be doing the album release party there.
It’s kind of like a homecoming.”Kettner and his crew — which also includes tenor saxophonist Paul Carlon, trumpeter Mark Collins, trombonist Tom McHugh and sousaphone player Heather Ewer — will bring the same communal spirit that has transcended borders to the collective experience at Joe’s.“You can dance there if you want or just listen to music.
So it’s a unique room,” said Kettner, whose outfit will be joined by progressive hip-hop artist Christylez Bacon and South African singer-songwriter Melanie Scholtz — both guests on “Archaic Humans.”Like Nation Beat’s musical mix, their new album title — conceptualized by Kettner and his co-writer Carlon — is multilayered.“The whole concept of the band, really, is that we’re borrowing traditions from these styles of folk music from a hundred years ago,” he said. “We’re carrying those traditions to a modern-day performance … And so ‘Archaic Humans’ is really kind of saying that to live in the present, we have to carry the past.
Like, we’re all carrying past DNA of our ancestors.“And the other layer of that is, we didn’t use any electronics on the album.
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