Following in the footsteps of legendary soul acts Booker T & the MG’s and the Meters, Brooklyn-based Menahan Street Band has been reinventing instrumental soul music for the new millennium. Now, with their latest album The Crossing, this distinct collective of New York’s finest soul musicians is elevating the genre to new heights.
Menahan Street Band, “The Crossing”
The group’s founder and guitarist, Thomas Brenneck, has described the title track as “an unreleased Sergio Leone western starring the Wu-Tang set in 1992.” The album itself encompasses an even wider array of influences that showcases the group’s raw, textured sound and skilled musicianship. And that makes The Crossing one of the most exciting soul releases of the year.
I caught up with the tall, impassioned producer and songwriter Brenneck over the phone during a rehearsal earlier this month. He told me more about this unique and eclectic soul band.
Menahan’s young musicians Make the Road by Walking
The core members of Menahan Street Band met 10 years ago when they were playing in various bands in New York, mostly from the city’s renowned soul label, Daptone Records. Drummer Homer Steinweiss and trumpeter Dave Guy were members of Sharon Jones’s ’60s-style funk and soul band the Dap-Kings; bass player Nick Movshon was playing with New York afrobeat collective Antibalas; saxophonist Leon Michels was leading his own band, the El Michels Affair. Brenneck was playing with the Dap-Kings and the Afro-Funksters, plus the Budos Band, along with Menahan’s organ player, Mike Deller.
Sharon Jones, “Let Them Knock”
“We were the young guys on the scene,” says Brenneck. “I guess being the younger guys in this circle of musicians, we [just] kind of got together.”
Back then, Brenneck set up a small studio in his bedroom in an apartment on Menahan Street in Brooklyn — hence the band name — and the young Daptone crew would hang out and jam the songs Brenneck was composing.
“I just had these songs that I was writing that didn’t fit a particular group, didn’t fit with the Budos Band, didn’t fit with Sharon Jones, so I started recording all these songs and eventually I had about 10 or 12 of them,” Brenneck told me.
These multi-layered instrumentals became the core of the group’s 2008 debut album, Make the Road by Walking, which was named after the community centre Brenneck lived above on Menahan Street. Daptone released the title track as a 45 and with its brass-driven lead and pumping horns the record established the Menahan Street Band as a Daptone group in its own right.
“I didn’t really think too much of it at the time, except that it was the music that I really dug, and I hoped some other people would like it too,” explains Brenneck. “But that particular 45 ended up having legs and led to a really big sample by Jay-Z.”
Menahan Street Band, “Make the Road by Walking”
Rappers’ Menahan delight
“Make the Road by Walking” was sampled in Jay-Z’s song “Roc Boys,” and the band’s music has also been used by 50 Cent. This relationship with hip-hop is an important element of the band’s chemistry, and Brenneck believes the genre has played a big part in the band’s sound, particularly on the new album.
“The new Menahan record, even more than the last one, just embraces those influences, you can really hear the Wu-Tang stuff just in the rhythm of it,” Brenneck tells me. “Not in the melody because there’s not much melody going on in that music, but the toughness and the ruggedness of those hip-hop records from that era specifically, 1992, is an influence that I think we all kinda like to wear now.”
Jay-Z, “Roc Boys (And the winner is…)”
Charles Bradley’s debut as frontman
Despite youth being a factor that brought Menahan Street Band together, it was ironically one of Daptone’s most senior artists that garnered the group greater recognition.
“A lot of people don’t connect the two,” says Brenneck. “But to me, it’s one and the same. To me, Charles Bradley is the frontman of the Menahan Street Band.”
Charles Bradley & Menahan Street Band, live in Paris
When Brenneck and Bradley met in the mid-2000s a songwriting bond was formed. Ever since, the two have worked closely together to produce some of modern soul music’s most important recordings.
“Charles is twice my age, man,” says Brenneck, “but me and him have a phenomenal [relationship], we became just the best of friends over the years…. Age, race, I mean all those things would not be in our favour, but none of those things matter, you know.”
Together, the pair created Bradley’s debut, 2011’s No Time for Dreaming, with the Menahan Street Band providing the music. The record was released to critical acclaim, and it thrust Bradley onto the international stage at age 62. The record even made Rolling Stone’s top 50 albums of last year. Now, Brenneck wants that success to bring greater attention to the group of musicians behind the voice.
“[Charles Bradley’s] platform really to sing all his aching songs is the Menahan Street Band,” says Brenneck. “I hope by putting out these instrumental records we can shine a light on the band and let people know that these are the guys that give Charles the platform for him to jump off.”
Charles Bradley and Thomas Brenneck, “Lovin’ You Baby”
Achieving rawness with instrumentals
Brenneck tells me that writing and producing songs for both Bradley and the Menahan Street Band is a completely different process, but there is one definitive component that can be found on both recordings.
“That rawness is what I love and that’s what I’m always trying to capture on record,” he points out. “Always, whether it’s Charles or Menahan, it’s not going for a shiny production, [it’s] going for a rough and tough production that you feel more than anything, and this goes for the new Menahan record, too.”
However, Brenneck says achieving that rawness is a lot easier when you have the lungs of Charles Bradley screaming out emotion.
“With instrumental music you have to do it with melodies, you have to do it with movement, you can arrange it in a whole other way that you never could do with a vocals song and that can make a certain emotion come through,” says Brenneck. “If I know I’m making an instrumental song I’m gonna go out of my way to make sure that it has more of an abstract form so it has more life … we have much more freedom with the structure of a song with instrumentals than if it's a vocal.”
Menahan Street Band, “Home Again” (from Make the Road by Walking)
The Crossing
The result, in terms of The Crossing, is one of the most original and diverse soul records you’re likely to hear. There is hip-hop, Afrobeat, Hendrix, funk and a wealth of other layers to the sound; the spaghetti western analogies are also not ill-placed.
“There is a lot of old western in this new record,” says Brenneck. “I don’t know why that came across because we’re a bunch of urbanites, but for some reason this record was like an escape from the city, even though it was made in Brooklyn.”
In many ways, The Crossing is a difficult record to define or categorize, but despite that Brenneck is clear about one point.
“I consider us a soul band,” Brenneck states. “I think the Menahan Street Band plays soul music. I mean, people can say jazz, or Afrobeat, whatever. Those might be influences, but really it’s a soul band.”
Now that most cities in North America boast a wealth of soul bands simply content to rehash old Motown and Stax staples it’s refreshing to hear the Menahan Street Band give a nod to the greats while also being prepared to move the soul genre forward.
Menahan Street Band, “Three Faces” (from The Crossing)
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