Charlie Wooton Project CD Release Party

The Charlie Wooton Project hit up Eddie's Attic in Decatur, GA on April 4th with full force. It was a special occasion to celebrate the release of the Projects first album, The Charlie Wooton Project. The album is a collaborative effort that does not only highlight Charlie’s massive meaningfulness on bass, but it also features a plethora of other, well established musicians that bring their own flavor and add to the southern style, jazzy funk. It was an evening of bass and drum compositions mixed with southern soul, jazzy funk and hints of the Caribbean with a lot of instruments on stage.


The show kicked off, quite appropriately, with a cover by bass virtuoso Jaco Pastorius. It featured a lazy bass solo that eventually filtered in raining background beats. But things didn't really start getting heated up until about 10 minutes into the first set when they tore into the first track from the new album "Snake Woman," featuring Oliver Wood (Wood Brothers) on guitar and vocals. They continued to play the entire effort song by song filtering in jams and spewing a realistic, live take on an album that was handcrafted by true performers.

Their southern hospitality hits hard throughout the night aided by the incorporation of Marcus Henderson (Marshall Tucker Band) on sax, flute, keys and vocals. "It's Not Funny" brings Marcus's deep, soulful vocals and real-funk keys perfectly together with Wooton's bass slaps for a festive, get-down sound. Tracks like "It's Not Funny" show that even though the album is named after the band leader, he does not demand all of the attention. He even switches it up and brings Atlanta based large lunged singing chic, Heather Lutrell on stage to play the only cover during the live set version of The Charlie Wooton Project for the famous jazz tune "Summertime."

The highlight of the set came one track before "Summertime" however. A quick percussion jam lead into a progressively built jam that melted into "To the End." "Let's see what happens when we add this one" is how Charlie introduced the second guitar, more drums, and some keys, then finally himself. His bass told alien tales that are not told by many bassists and leaned toward sounds hit by the likes of Les Claypool; a dance party certainly ensued.

Following the completion of the album set, they blasted through a list of standards then raged a new tune "Curabella." This version was pretty sick and the song itself is reminiscent of a tight Allman Brothers jam. The evening closed out with "Living Room Song" and they had to call it a success. Charlie kept the crowd in tune with each song by telling a story about it if he had a story to tell and exuding the demeanor of a person that was having a fucking good time. He laid out a long list of thank you's to show his gratitude and apologized for the extreme amount of musicians that were on the stage stating that "Eddies Attic isn't used to having this many instruments on stage." The show was solid and the stage was jam packed with a great lineup. The project is just now developing and the songs from the new album appear to have more live potential that has yet to be untapped.

Check out an audience recording of the Charlie Wooton Project CD release party from Archive.org

here: Charlie Wooton Project - 4.4.2010 Decatur, GA