Eddie Chacon, a lowkey R&B legend, and John Carroll Kirby, a sought-after jazz keyboardist, took a two-week studio trip to Ibiza in October of 2021. A fan had offered Eddie and John the chance to stay in his Ibiza home for as long as they liked. While there, they rented the only Fender Rhodes on the island from a local rave crew, and used Pharoah Sanders’ “Greeting to Saud” as a daily inspiration source.
These sessions led to Sundown, Chacon’s tenderhearted R&B album that was released this spring on Stones Throw Records. It is experimental soul of the highest regard.
Not quite Mad Professor meets Marvin Gaye, but you get the idea.
The duo performed together at The Chapel on Wednesday, June 28, as the first date of their tour. Compositions flowed—calling them songs would just be clumsy, like they were working freehand—with Chacon bouncing, just as giddy as an elf working in a 12-months-a-year Christmas shop. He shared with the crowd that this was his first time performing in his hometown for a while. “I mean, I’m from Hayward,” he blurted out to his adorning fans.
Chacon spoke upfront about starting out as a metal vocalist (an era comprised mainly of screaming), and how decades later he was able to perform in the vein of artists who he adored all along, Marvin Gaye being one of them. Still, he was not able to sing in Gaye’s style or ilk. That all changed when he moved to LA and found himself, again.
The LA-based musician Kirby has a distinctive sound that goes beyond jazz.
He has worked with superstars like Solange, Frank Ocean, and Harry Styles as well as independent musicians like Yves Tumor, Connan Mockasin, Liv.e, and many more. His main thing has been blending genres—imagine Jan Hammer, minus the coke and perhaps a hint of shrooms. Inspired by time spent in Costa Rica playing with local musicians and imagining “failed utopias,” his new solo album Blowout was also released on the Stones Throw imprint last week. Obviously, that label is building a roster of artists who their post-hip-hop acolytes can follow without hesitation. Blowout is equal parts Quincy Jones ’70s funk and easygoing tenor that packs balminess and comedic swings.
In performance, these two risk-takers improvised sketches, used sung word sounds, and evolved arrangements that peaked and crested on the fly. Kirby whirled up his Fender Rhodes and keyboards, and Moog explored Stevie Wonder frequencies—Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants comes to mind offhand—but it didn’t matter. This crowd, not annoying hipsters nor obnoxious techies, more of a “let’s grab a beer after capoeira class” assemblage dressed in knitted hats fashioned into bizarre configurations, were there for all the trippy boogie.
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During the performance of “Step by Step,” a song Chacon describes as “how a lot of what we experience is a mirror reflection of ourselves, finally realizing that oftentimes we are the only person standing in the way,” the young crowd kept on clapping midway through the song when the two performers on stage stopped momentarily.
Mysteriously, some crowd members—feeling something—swayed and danced to the non-present beat. Which I found funny.
Most people who dance and sway to songs with no beat are actually the same people who need forced rhythmic instruction, just to stay in the ballpark of rhythm.
Kirby, with a confused look on his face, did, in fact, return with the song on the beat, using corrective math to compensate for the off-time hippies grooving to the cosmic nature of the song. Similar to when Mary J. Blige dances to words?
Bingo.
Buy Eddie Chacon’s Sundown here.
