North Bay psychedelic soul outfit Monophonics plays Independent in SF

SAN FRANCISCO — A Bay Area soul institution for over 17 years, North Bay outfit Monophonics has gradually evolved to become one of San Francisco’s most creative purveyors of psychedelic soul. 

Founded by drummer Austin Bolman in 2005, the quintet initially mined a vein of instrumental jazz-funk similar to boogaloo revivalists The Sugarman 3, Soulive, and the Greyboy Allstars — whose saxophonist, Karl Denson, guested on the crew’s 2010 album Into the Infrasounds.

The group’s third album, 2012’s In Your Brain, showed the results of what sounded like the members of Monophonics doing some serious woodshedding in the Temptations’ “Psychedelic Shack.” Introducing a fuzzed-out guitar sound soaked in Echoplex delay, tunes like “Sure Is Funky,” “All Together,” and the title track were reminiscent of the acid-laced grooves of early Funkadelic and noted Motown producer Norman Whitfield’s most tripped-out creations with the Temps and Edwin Starr.

The album also featured a stellar cover of “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” that holds its own against the timeless Nancy Sinatra and Terry Reid versions of the Sonny Bono-penned classic and pointed towards the next turn the band’s sound would take. While still steeped in the ’60s sound, the band’s latest recording, Sound of Sinning, embraces a different side of the psychedelic era.

Without abandoning distorted guitars and funk breaks altogether, the new Monophonics album offers up intricate orchestrations and slow-burn balladry spotlighting keyboardist Kelly Finnigan’s remarkable pipes while nodding equally to the lush chamber pop of the Beach Boys and the Zombies. In 2015, the band delivered a fiery set on the main Banjo Stage for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival that was a highlight of the Friday performances.

The following year, the group was a featured act at BottleRock in Napa and in 2018 played Outside Lands, completing a trifecta of major Bay Area music festivals. The group also issued their EP Mirrors, a collection of well-known and obscure covers, that tided fans over until the release of their 2020  effort It’s Only Us, the band’s first full-length for noted retro soul imprint Colemine Records.

Following the path taken by Finnigan on his solo debut Tales People Tell that embraced the languid sounds of lowrider soul balladry, the album found the group coming into its own with its lush tunes and intricate string and horn arrangements that at points recall the majesty of classic Curtis Mayfield and Rotary Connection records.

While it was initially unable to promote the album with touring due to the COVID shutdown, the band would also release a digital-only instrumental version of the album before finally being able to play some live dates last year. The group remained busy, writing and recording another round of new material for their latest release Sage Motel. A loose concept album built around the happenings and characters inhabiting a fictional bohemian inn, the collection of songs further pushes the envelop of orchestrated, dreamlike atmospheres the band has become so skilled at crafting. 

For this Saturday night show at the Independent in San Francisco, Monophonics will be joined by fellow Colemine-affiliated recording artists GA-20 and Kendra Morris. Originally from St. Petersburgh, Florida, and raised by parents who were both musicians, opening act Morris made a brief stab at higher education but found herself dropping out of college to focus on songwriting. After self-releasing a pair of EPs, she came to wider public attention as a competitor on the Fuse TV reality show Redemption Song in 2008. While she voluntarily left the show by the fourth episode, Morris was already well along on her path to pursue music professionally.

She would relocate to New York City, eventually connecting with like-minded musicians who were drawing equally from ’70s vintage rock and soul sounds and signing a deal with taste-making label Wax Poetics (the imprint of the well-established soul/jazz/hip-hop music quarterly of the same name). Her first single “Concrete Waves” and subsequent debut album Banshee that was released in 2012 featured the singer collaborating with guitarist/producer Jeremy Page on her languid, cinematic originals, but Morris also got plenty of attention for a series of cover tunes posted on the Internet leading up to the album’s release.

The response to her jazzy takes on the Pink Floyd classic “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” and Metallica’s “Ride the Lightning” (surprisingly recast as a smoldering soul ballad) in particular further raised her profile and led the singer to assemble a full album of covers entitled Mockingbird in 2013. The diverse collection found Morris ably interpreting everything from ’60s soul and pop (the Charmels’ “As Long As I Have You” and Burt Bachrach’s “Walk on By”) to modern alternative rock (Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” and Radiohead’s “Karma Police”).

Since then, the singer has continued to explore a soulful style of songwriting that has earned her comparisons to the late Amy Winehouse and contemporary soul stylists like Alice Russell and Portishead’s Beth Gibbons. In 2016, Morris issued the six-song EP Babble that included the fuzzed-out, simmering psychedelic torch songs “Wizards Float” and “Woman” that garnered more raves. She has since released a few singles and collaborated with hip-hop supergroup Czarface, but it wasn’t until Colemine subsidiary Karma Chief put out her latest full-length effort Nine Lives earlier this year that fans have had a full collections of new music from Morris.

Teamed with longtime production and songwriting partner Jeremy Page, the singer once again sends her voice soaring over lush string arrangements on sprawling, cinematic tunes like “This Life” and the soul/psych title track. Support band GA-20 is a stripped down trio featuring guitarist/singer Pat Faherty, guitarist Matt Stubbs and drummer Tim Carman playing a mix of spare Delta blues, swampy funk and primal early rock in the style of Link Wray. Last week, Karma Chief released the trio’s latest effort Crackdown, its first since the 2021 full-length album tribute to blues great Hound Dog Taylor.

Monophonics with GA-20 and Kendra Morris
Saturday, Sept. 17, 8 p.m. $25
The Independent