Cory Henry & the Funk Apostles at the Prophet Bar

Cory Henry at the Prophet Bar, Dallas. (Photo: Chosen Musicians)

Cory Henry & the Funk Apostles
The Prophet Bar
Dallas, TX
May 16, 2015

After touring Europe with the jazz group Snarky Puppy, Cory Henry crossed the pond and is leading his own outfit Cory Henry and the Funk Apostles on a mini American tour. Last night the Apostles were at the appropriately-named Prophet Bar in Dallas.

The show opened with the sound of congas, Cory Henry laid some Herbie Hancock piano over it. Cory has a way of giving hand signals, like a sort of a fist-pump, and that signal brought the whole band in. It was straight-ahead funk, sounded a bit like the Afro-beat star Fela Kuti.

The band members are versatile and play off each other; on this first cut Andrew Bailey’s guitar mimicked the sounds of Cory Henry’s keyboard.

The second song was a slow bluesy number starting out with just keyboard, and then joined by Sharay Reed on bass. Nick Semrod followed up with a little keyboard bass. The band stayed true to its funk roots, but it was jazzy, bluesy; definitively a blues song and at the end Cory said, Rest in peace, B.B. King, a tribute to recently-passed blues legend.

The band then moved into a slowed-downed, stripped-down version of Prince’s 1999 with Cory on vocoder: ‘I was dreaming when I wrote this, so sue me if I go to fast.’ At the end of each verse, the band would bring the funk with a thunderous boom.

The band is relatively new. They played their first show ever at the Prophet Bar this past January. For this show, Cory said they are rolling a whole new set of songs. The band – Sharay Reed on bass, Nick Semrod on keyboards, Andrew Bailey guitar, Taron Lockett drums and also on drums Nikki Glaspie, sitting in for Cleon Edwards – held up well. They are currently touring throughout the northeast United States along with the group Nth Power.