Butcher Brown – a jazz/funk/hip-hop ensemble, originally from Richmond, Virginia – make music you don’t want to stop listening to. The rhythmic execution is exquisite – impeccably tight and impossibly relaxed. The sounds are like something you’ve heard before – and like nothing you’ve heard before. The songs are immediately memorable, with clear, striking profiles – but as you listen more closely, you discover their depth of construction.

 

In 2022, the band released Butcher Brown Presents Triple Trey, a superb suite of rap songs with big band accompaniment. Their latest record, Solar Music (which came out October 6, 2023), is different: a stream of long-phrased melodies, incomparable grooves and surreally shifting palettes. If Triple Trey were a film shot in pristine, high-contrast black and white, then Solar Music would be an exploration of the possibilities of technicolor. 

 

I met Butcher’s guitarist, Morgan Burrs, and drummer, Corey Fonville, for a conversation on Zoom, just over a week before their new album was dropping. Burrs was in his apartment; Fonville was in a practice room, perched on his drum throne, with kit behind him. They and their bandmates (keyboardist DJ Harrison, bassist Andrew Randazzo and rapper/saxophonist/trumpeter Marcus Tenney) would soon be heading out on tour, across the country and to Europe. I wanted to know more about the energy and inspiration fueling the group’s current creative streak, and Burrs and Fonville came back at me with answers as living, as sinuous and seeking, as their music. – Max Scheinin

 

Max Scheinin: So where you guys at now? I know you’re getting ready to go on tour.

 

Morgan Burrs: Where you at, Corey?

 

Corey Fonville: I’m at the crib in Baltimore – just chillin’ for a second, before we get ready to hit this road. 

 

MB: I’m in LA. That’s where I live now. 

 

MS: So neither of you guys live in Richmond anymore?

 

CF: Well, we’re both from Richmond – I grew up in Virginia Beach, which is like two hours southeast of Richmond. Morgan grew up in Richmond. But Richmond is our musical home, man. That’s where we all cut our teeth. So that’s gonna be there through and through.

 

MS: Do you feel like your music is different for being from Richmond, rather than being from Atlanta or Austin or New York?

 

CF: Yeah. We get a mix of the north and the south. We’re southern, being from Virginia – it’s the southeast. But we still get that 95 corridor, 95 north energy, some of that deep DC vibe. Go-go definitely trickled down to the Virginia area, too. But we’re still more on the southern side.

 

MS: How does that change what the music sounds like?

 

CF: All of our music is gonna be rooted in the blues in one way or another.

 

I think that we’re influenced by people like D’Angelo, who’s from Richmond – that sound, which is rooted in gospel quartets. So there’s some of that in there. 

 

But hip hop is huge in Virginia, too. We were the weird state when it came to music production. No one’s beats sounded like Timbaland’s, or like Neptune’s. It was a unique sound that didn’t exist – they were putting synthesizers and baby voices in their beats. 

 

We were I think overlooked in many ways, being in Virginia, because it’s a sports state – everything in Virginia is centered around football or basketball. Incredible athletes have come out of Virginia, so music was kind of secondary in that way. So I feel like we never got the same attention as an Atlanta, or other neighboring states. 

 

So it forced us to get creative and carve out our own lane – even tapping into folk music and bluegrass and southern rock; you got that world, too. It’s cool, it’s interesting. So that’s my take on it; Morgan may have something else. 

 

MB: Yeah, I think there’s a little chip on the shoulder, because of the recognition piece that Corey’s talking about. Virginia never really gets recognized, because it’s not New York or Atlanta or LA. Y’know, I moved to LA three months ago now – three months and some change – so I’m still feeling it out. But there’s just so much soul in Virginia that I don’t really sense here – I don’t really sense it anywhere. 

 

To be fair, I haven’t really gotten fully out and adjusted. But I’ve been visiting LA for a long time; we’ve spent a lot of time in these other cities. And Virginia’s a really unique place, Richmond is a really unique place. The music scene is really vibrant.

 

I’ve always felt some of that chip-on-the-shoulder type of attitude. 

 

CF: We get slept on.

 

MB: Yeah yeah yeah, straight up. 

 

CF: We get slept on a little bit. 

 

MB: Our music isn’t about ego. That’s not really the vibe. But in terms of general attitude, it’s like, “Yeah, bro, we made this shit, too – that’s why we feel like we’re the best.” 

 

MS: Those southern musical traditions that you’re talking about, do you guys feel like you had mentors or teachers who passed that feel onto you?

 

CF: Yeah – probably in one way or another. It was just being around – we’ve all played some soulful gigs, man, whether it’s at Richmond Jazz Society, where it’s aunties and uncles who run the whole situation and it’s just mad soulful, or smooth-jazz gigs – that area is smooth-jazz land, wine coolers and all that.

 

MS: You grew up playing smooth jazz gigs?

 

CF: Not really – I was around it a lot. I think I’m just too young for it, our generation. But we saw it – it was everywhere. So we would show up to festivals and it’s thriving.

 

And I have an appreciation for it that maybe others don’t, because there’s a lane. And that was some music that was able to bring someone who was coming from R&B and hip hop into that other world. 

 

And I do think that brings the conversation to another topic, to acid jazz, and that’s kind of where the Butcher Brown sound comes in. We talk about Ronny Jordan often – killer guitar player from the UK. He passed away, but he had this one song called “After Hours” that slaps. We listen to that all the time – it’s a sleeper, man. But I don’t know – it’s the impact, man; it was on the smooth-jazz radio all the time in the early ’90s, and my dad would always turn that shit up any time it came on.

 

MS: How long have the five of you guys all been playing together?

 

MB: I joined the band in 2017. Corey’s been playing with the rest of the guys for a lot longer than that. So I’m the newest guy – well, me and Marcus [Tenney] are, but Marcus was playing with them before he technically joined the band.

 

CF: Morgan, he’s a little younger than us, but it’s funny, because he has an older sister that went to school with Andy [Randazzo] and DJ [Harrison] and I think Marcus as well. So it was all tied in – she was a classical violinist at BCU. Morgan came up, probably about six, seven years later – he just came on the scene playing guitar, and he was killing it. When Keith [Askey], our former guitar player, moved away, we just wanted to see if Morgan could join. That’s when Marcus officially came in.

 

We had all been doing gigs in Richmond, with other groups, probably close to 15 years. And then the Butcher thing started taking more shape around 2011, 2012. And officially 2014, when we dropped All Purpose Music, was when it became trademarked and we decided really to become a band: trademark the name, copyright everything, and start an LLC.

 

MS: And when it started taking shape, even before that – at the outset – were you guys looking at yourself as a jazz combo, or were you always thinking of yourself as a fusion of multiple genres?

 

CF: Yeah, the latter. We’re coming from the school of Madlib and Stones Throw Records – that was music we were all listening to. DJ Harrison would always play us his own beats that he was making, and that inspired us a ton, because he’s an incredible producer in his own right. So it was between us sharing music. We always were hanging out, smoking weed, and sharing music with each other: super organic, man.

 

You find your people. You find your people within a scene: Richmond has a really talented scene, there’s a lot of great talent in that city. But you find people that you really gel with, man, on a high level. So it just naturally came together, it wasn’t forced. We started recording at the house, and it just snowballed from there.

 

MS: Nowadays, will you guys just get together to jam, without having a dedicated purpose for it or rehearsing for something – just jam together? 

 

CF: It’s tougher these days.

 

MB: Yeah, yeah, but it does happen. It happens whenever we’re packing the van, or doing something else at the studio. Somebody gets on the piano, and Corey hops on the drums. And sound checks – we definitely do that.

 

CF: Yeah – voice memos.

 

MB: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I definitely have a lot of voice memos off the sound checks, of random shit. But it is tougher because Corey lives in Baltimore, I live here.

 

MS: But voice memos, you guys will text each other ideas that you want to jam on together?

 

CF: Yeah, it could be that. Or we just record our sound check: there’s something that was dope, and we’re just like, “Hold up, let me just get that real quick, before we lose that idea,” because we might forget it in an hour. And then when we get back in the studio and start working on more music, we can just pull out our phones and we have something – ”Oh yeah, we did this in sound check!” And we just workshop it and record.

 

MS: So when you go into the studio, do you already have your songs prepared, or do you have basic ideas that you’re gonna work out once you’re there in the studio?

 

MB: We all keep a bunch of demos in our phones. The prep that everybody does before a Butcher session is different from person to person. But usually when we’re doing sessions, it’s round robin, so one person goes, next person goes, and we do that. We don’t really go in the studio often with, “Okay, these are the songs we’re gonna do.” Aside from the person who made it, we always hear it together for the first time at the studio.

 

Makes it organic. I think it keeps everybody’s minds open, because whatever somebody shows everybody else, the demo is gonna change – it’s not gonna be exactly what that is. So we hear it together and we have the idea, but it’s destined to change. 

 

It all happens at the studio, really. Sometimes we go in the studio and we’re like, “Okay, we’re doing this song” – like when we did “Remind Me.” But usually it’s like, let’s just get to the studio and then we’ll figure it out today. Well, there’s some kind of general, overarching focus for the studio days – just what we’re doing. But in terms of actually learning songs before we go, we don’t really do that.

 

CF: Most of the records that we’ve recorded have been that way. I think each single [on Butcher’s new album, Solar Music], actually, was like that – ”I Can Say to You,” that was the first one, that was something Tenney brought in that day. And we just laid it down, we laid down that foundation. “DYKWYD” was a song that we had just been playing at shows that Tenney wrote as well. And then, “This Side of Sunshine” was a song we had always enjoyed listening to that was a Roy Ayers joint, and we just decided to re-work it.

 

So a lot of it just happened there in the studio that day – very organic. The fun part is allowing the wheels in people’s minds to start spinning and see what people come up with there. Because that’s the special shit – that’s why we all play together, because we want to see what’s gonna happen.

 

MS: I would imagine that Triple Trey, that must have been different, right? – you must have had the big-band tracks as background tracks that you guys played against, but you knew what it was gonna be before you went into the studio for that one? 

 

MB: Yeah, that was a rare situation. Right, we did know – we knew exactly what we were going into the studio to do. And Andy [Randazzo] had already arranged all those charts, and the big band had played it – is that right?

 

CF: I think so. So yeah, we played a couple shows [of the Triple Trey song list] – probably one or two shows before that. And we may have done a rehearsal, just the five of us. Because we didn’t record it with the horns – we did the rhythm section stuff separate. So we ran through the songs and we were familiar with it. So when we went into the studio, it was just like, okay, a couple takes for each song. And then the horns came in another day.

 

So yeah, that was a special case, because it’s through-composed. 

 

MS: Does that change the way that you play? Today I was listening to that record, and on the track “Unbelievable,” there’s this crazy solo going in the background – I think it’s an oboe? So I imagine you guys get into the studio, and there are these details that maybe you’re not familiar with before, like the oboe going wild behind you. Do you feel like the playing changes reflecting this different circumstance?

 

CF: Oh, you’re talking about the soprano solo, the soprano solo!

 

MB: Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

 

MS: Oh alright, that’s a soprano sax?

 

CF: Shoutout to Kevin Simpson!

 

Nah, I mean, that was just part of it, you know? If I can be honest with you, I wish I could go back and re-do what I played on there now, because it was so fresh at the time for me personally, whereas now I’m more familiar with it, and I would have made different musical choices.

 

MS: That’s really interesting, because something else I wanted to ask you guys is, you guys are virtuosic musicians individually, and you’re virtuosic as a band. So you’re playing at this very high level – what do you guys see as the challenges that you’re taking on as musicians, and how do you keep setting new challenges for yourself so you can keep evolving as musicians?

 

MB: I don’t know. We all personally know what we struggle with, I guess, but recording in general is just really easy with the band. It all just flows and it all makes sense.

 

Like for me, recording solos, that’s something that – I have to take a bunch of takes of solos.

 

CF: It’s hard, bro!

 

MB: Yeah, yeah. It’s crazy putting the improvised thing on wax, because you’re never really super satisfied with it, I don’t think – except when we hear Marcus do it and it’s always just right [laughs]. It doesn’t matter what he plays, really, it’s just right.

But I don’t know – it’s really easy to record. It’s definitely getting away more from that improvised solo thing, because a lot of times we’ll save things for the live show, to keep it interesting. I think it’s easy to record the band. I don’t think we really encounter many struggles. We just keep our minds open, and it naturally moves in a direction of getting better and more future-thinking, because our general attitude is, there’s not really a bad idea. There might be an idea that doesn’t work right now. But there’s not a bad idea. I think that’s the thing that keeps it moving forward and keeps it pushing and keeps it growing.