It’s another chilly Friday night in what’s been such a long cold winter in the City by the Bay that the San Francisco Chronicle recently deemed it “close” to being the coldest winter in the city’s history. But local music fans have been grateful as the fabled Fillmore Auditorium has been heating things up with a festive early-year schedule featuring recent barnburners from Railroad Earth, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, Lettuce, Rubblebucket, and Margo Price. Now enter the New Orleans-based funk voyagers of Galactic here on 3 March, back for their first visit to the Fillmore in quite a few years after having played the larger Warfield Theater on their past few trips to town.
Hence it is a celebratory occasion, especially for Gen-X fans of Galactic, who caught them in their first two visits to the Fillmore in 1998. Galactic were upstart musical ambassadors back then, just rising up to bring the gospel of New Orleans funk jamming to the masses. Twenty-five years later, Galactic are such veteran stalwarts of the New Orleans scene that they saved the legendary Tipitina’s Nightclub by purchasing it themselves in 2018. It’s an incredible saga, and it’s always great to have Galactic back in San Francisco, which has long been like a second home for the funky troubadours.
Fans are therefore meeting up early for pre-game dinner and libations. The Fillmore’s adjacent proximity to San Francisco’s Japantown offers an ideal culinary option for these cold nights, with many noodle houses offering hot ramen and tasty sake. The sake has fans feeling well-lubricated when they enter the Fillmore for a Galactic funk fiesta. There are extra treats in store, too, with New Orleans keyboardist Jon Cleary billed as a special guest on tour and bass legend George Porter Jr. from the Meters. Funk fans are thus primed for a cross-generational meeting of the minds.
A visit to the merch stand finds Galactic still selling their “Astro Cat” shirts and hoodies, featuring art with a heady-looking cosmic cat in an astronaut outfit that they had also been trading as a poster when they threw down a most triumphant set opening for the String Cheese Incident at the Berkeley Greek Theater in the summer of 2021. Perhaps this artwork even inspired the instrumental track “Big Whiskers” from Galactic’s new EP Tchompitoulas. It’s a great logo for them with how it captures the concept of cool cats ready to blast off with some cosmic funk, which perfectly captures the vibe here at the Fillmore.
“Out in the Street” from 2012’s Carnivale Electricos is an early highlight, with vocalist Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph fronting the group on an inspiring number that blends an upbeat funk groove with some hot R&B vibes. The studio recording featured the great Cyril Neville on vocals, but Jelly shows what a soulful chameleon she can be here as she makes the song her own.
Writing songs that can work with either a male or female vocalist has long been part of Galactic’s funktastic formula, as is interspersing the vocal tunes with hot instrumental jams like the very groovy “Balkan Wedding”. Drummer/ringleader Stanton Moore, bassist Robert Mercurio and guitarist Jeff Raines lock in tightly here to get the audience grooving with an electrifying vibe. Saxophonist Ben Ellman, trumpeter Shamarr Allen, and keyboardist Rich Vogel bring in another layer of funky melodies to generate a high-energy sound that really gets the party started.
“Higher and Higher” keeps the energy rising with an energetic number powered by Moore’s propulsive beats, as Jelly sings of pushing it higher where “your desire sets you free”. Raines stars here with a melty guitar solo as he tears up the fretboard with some fiery psychedelic licks. “Hey Na Na” gets the crowd going with classic Mardis Gras-style jamming as Jelly leads the audience in a call-and-response mode. Moore and Mercurio are dialed in as a fierce rhythm section here, with Mercurio’s punchy bass line powering a vibrant dance party.
Galactic ride this wave into the tightly syncopated bluesy funk of “Dolla Diva”, a perennial party-time fan favorite since the 2014-15 era when former vocalist Maggie Koerner was bringing the house down every night. It’s a showcase groove as Jelly owns it again while the group rocks out and the Fillmore dance continues to heat up. Another smoking instrumental jam keeps the good times rolling as Galactic seem to connect on a higher interdimensional level.
The special guest segment that closes out the show takes the set in a decidedly vintage direction with Jon Cleary fronting the band on piano and vocals for Dr. John‘s “Such a Night”, a Dixie-style classic Dr. John performed with the Band in The Last Waltz. The multi-talented Cleary then moves to guitar and leads Galactic through his funky rocker “Boneyard”, which seems tailor-made for them, with Ellman’s sax propelling the energy higher over a hot groove.
Then it’s the great George Porter Jr. joining the fun as he takes over on bass, while Mercurio moves over to tambourine and enjoys watching the master in action. The horns and singers exit as Porter, Moore, Raines, and Vogel rock the house in the classic Meters mode as a groovy quartet on a scintillating instrumental jam, with Porter’s crisp, funky low-end sounding absolutely dynamite here on the Fillmore’s stellar sound system.
“We gonna go old school on ya,” Jelly advises the audience as she and the horns return for a smashing rendition of Aretha Franklin‘s “Rock Steady” that lights up the night. The rhythm section crushes it with an aggressive low-end attack from Porter and tight accents from Moore, while Jelly rocks the sassy vocals, and the horns pump up the volume. Porter then takes the lead voice on another old-school New Orleans-style groover to close the show as he sings of burning it to the ground. Ellman and Allen take big sax and trumpet solos on a climactic jam, as Porter and Galactic have elevated the temperature to heat the Fillmore on this chilly night.
It’s been great to see Galactic team up with many different luminaries from the New Orleans community over the years, from seminal legends like members of the Meters to rising stars looking to make their mark. When they used the title of their third album in 2000 to dub themselves Late For the Future, it was an indicator of their devotion to the vintage sounds of New Orleans. Yet at the same time, Galactic’s inherently futuristic name and innovative approach to blending vintage funk with progressive jamming have made them a timeless band.