#binky griptite

Song Review: Susan Tedeschi and Sharon Jones - “Bring it on Home to Me” (Live, 2015)

Though they didn’t get to do it often enough, Susan Tedeschi and Sharon Jones were born to sing together.

Joining forces for a 2015 Spotify Session and backed by members of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, the Dap-Kings and Doyle Bramhall II, Tedeschi and Jones make Sam Cooke’s “Bring it on Home to Me” all their own. And they do it effortlessly, flawlessly and with obvious joy and mutual respect.

Singing virtually every word together save for alternating yeahs at the end of each verse, the vocalists catch their breath only when Derek Trucks and Binky Griptite swap short guitar solos.

And though Trucks is typically a song-stealing-solo kind of guy, this rendition is all Tedeschi and Jones, who died the following year, making this black-and-white video an invaluable keepsake.

Grade card: Susan Tedeschi and Sharon Jones - “Bring it on Home to Me” (Live, 2015) - A

Say She She – Music Hall of Williamsburg – June 8, 2024

Some things never go out of style, like blue jeans, baseball or funky good times. Say She She brought a whole lot of the latter to Music Hall of Williamsburg on Saturday night, mixing a timeless funk with a modern-day sensibility — and the good times were rolling. The set opened with “Reeling,” the three vocalists — Piya Malik, Sabrina Mileo Cunningham and Nya Gazelle Brown — delivering soulful soprano harmonies while the band thumped a groove behind them, as if Sharon Jones had been reincarnated as three opera singers, former Dap-King Binky Griptite leading on guitar to complete the scene.

Brown exuberantly announced, “We came to make you dance” after the opening tune and it was truth in advertising. The packed house grooved to tunes like “C'est Si Bon,” with its heavy bass disco, and “Prism,” which featured the ladies doing a hip shimmy, one of many choreographed moves that helped get the audience boogying. The straight disco-funk sound evolved a bit as the set went on, a darker feel on “Echo in the Chamber,” some serious rock on “Blow My Mind,” which ended with a spicy solo from Griptite, and a modern synth groove on “Questions.”

A take on the Talking Heads’ “Slippery People” was a perfect fit, giving the band extra room to move and ending in a nifty three-woman scat jam. The trio left the stage to the let the band have their deserved spotlight and then returned in new sparkle-heavy outfits and took back the spotlight, saving some of the best vocals for late-set tunes like “Astral Plane” and the serious clavinet-funk of “Forget Me Not.” Ethereal harmonies, a groove-ready band and a packed-house party in Brooklyn, some things will never go out of style. —A. Stein | @Neddyo