Celebrating David Byrne and Talking Heads at Carnegie Hall

We'll be the house band for a celebration of the music of David Byrne and Talking Heads on March 23, 2015 at Carnegie Hall. We're excited to be backing / collaborating with over 14 featured artists including Sharon Jones, the Roots, Cee-Lo Green, Bebel Gilberto, Beth Orton, Steve Earle, Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top), Santigold, and many others.

100% of the net proceeds from the show go to six charities connecting youth with music and the visual arts in New York City: Church Street School for Music and Art, Midori and Friends, Young Audiences NY, Little Kids Rock, The Center for Arts Education, and the Grammys in the Schools program of the Grammy Foundation.

The night before (March 22), we'll be doing a warm-up/rehearsal show at City Winery in NYC.

TICKETS/INFO: http://musicof.org

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(PS: We got to do this gig last year as well performing the music of Paul Simon. Read about it HERE or click on the image below.)

On tour now with Zap Mama

The tour with Zap Mama has been great so far. We have our 9th of 29 shows tomorrow at Penn State University's Eisenhower Center. Below is a video of us preparing for the tour in Brooklyn a few weeks ago:

Here's a few reviews from our recent shows:

• Variety Playhouse Atlanta, GA
• House of Blues, Orlando, FL

On the Road with Zap Mama

Greetings from Tampa. We're two shows into a 29 show tour with the amazing Zap Mama taking us across the US (and one show in Toronto). What a treat to start the tour in warm sunny Florida, far away from the bitter cold of Brooklyn. We'll be here for three more shows (West Palm Beach, Miami, and Orlando) before making our way back north via Atlanta, Richmond, Newport News, and DC, and then to some of the coldest parts of the US...

The tour has been unique in that we're collaborating with Zap Mama...we've learned some of their songs, and they've learned some of ours, and the bulk of the set features the twelve of us and four of them singing and making music together. In addition to Zap Mama's tunes, we're performing mostly new original material...songs composed by lead vocalist Amayo and Antibalas founder/baritone saxophonist Martín Perna. In the mix so far: "Action Time", "Hook and Crook", and "Tombstown". We're also doing a trademark Antibalas arrangement of the 1984 Rockwell/Michael Jackson jam "Somebody's Watching Me" which seemed like a silly paranoid fantasy at the time it hit the radio, but now 30 years later has proven to be prophetic. Audiences are loving it in the way that you can love a song that tells the bitter truth about a sad, absurd reality.

Zap Mama is amazing and it has been a pleasure working with them. After seventeen years of Antibalas being an all-male band, their presence has created a refreshing and necessary equilibrium of yin and yang energy onstage. They are consummate professionals, excellent vocal performers, great dancers, sharp dressers (we've had to really step up our clothing game) and all-around nice people. It's been a family vibe with Marie and Lene each bringing their children out for the first leg of the tour.

We'll be posting some live recordings on our Soundcloud page (and mirrored here) as well as photos and video of the tour. You can follow it virtually, but nothing will come close to the experience of seeing this rare collaboration live in person.

Stay tuned.