Missy Lane's Assembly Room - Venue

“I’ve always had an affinity for the Hammond organ,” says Sam Fribush. “It’s such a greasy, funky, soulful instrument, but it’s also an incredible piece of engineering. You open it up and there’s over a hundred spinning discs; it’s more complicated than a grandfather clock. It has such a mind of its own — most of the time, it feels like it’s playing me more than I’m playing it.”

That funky Hammond sound can be heard in all its greasy glory on two blazing new albums from the Sam Fribush Organ Trio — Vol. I: Riverboat and Vol II: The Root. Produced by virtuoso guitarist Charlie Hunter, both records find Fribush, Hunter and drummer Geoff Clapp putting their special soulful spin on everything from jazz standards (Yusef Lateef’s “Plum Blossom,” Billy Strayhorn’s “A Flower is a Lovesome Thing”), New Orleans touchstones (Allen Toussaint’s “Riverboat,” Ellis Marsalis Jr.’s “Swingin’ at the Haven”), 70s R&B jams (Billy Preston’s “Will It Go Round in Circles,” The Impressions’ “We Must Be in Love”) and modern classics like D’Angelo’s “The Root” and Bonnie Raitt’s “Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About,” as well as a couple of Fribush originals. Playful, thrilling, and cheerfully sweat-soaked, both records cook like the kitchen of a packed juke joint. If you dig the likes of Jimmy McGriff, Big John Patton and Brother Jack McDuff, the Sam Fribush Organ Trio is most definitely in your wheelhouse.

The Sam Fribush Organ Trio began to take shape in the spring of 2020, when Fribush — a jazz piano graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, who had established a sizeable following in New Orleans — moved back from the Big Easy to his hometown of Greensboro, NC. “My friends in New Orleans and I were all making a fine living, having fun, playing out every night of the week, and putting cash in our pockets,” he recalls, “but then the pandemic hit and all the gigs dried up.” A mutual friend introduced Frisbush to Hunter, who had himself relocated to Greensboro from the NYC area a few years earlier, and the two immediately hit it off. After woodshedding together in a converted garage studio at Fribush’s parents house, the pair convened at Stephen Lee Price’s Studio in High Point, NC with veteran jazz drummer Clapp in tow.