music
Universal
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FUNKY MUSICIAN KARL DENSON
RETURNS TO EUGENE
By Will Kennedy
F
unk and soul musician Karl Denson is back
home in San Diego, speaking on the phone
with Eugene Weekly after a four-night run
in New York. He had been performing with
a lineup that included turntablist DJ Logic,
bringing elements of hip hop and electronic
music to his typical sound, heavy with horns,
organ and a tight rhythm section.
Brought up on Motown and James Brown, it’s this
willingness to push boundaries that helped Denson make
his name as a multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter
— from early music with soul and pop rock songwriter
Lenny Kravitz to time spent playing with The Greyboy
Allstars, a soul and jazz band crossing over with West
Coast jam rock appeal.
Featuring him on both saxophone and flute, Denson’s
Photo by Robbie Jeffers
latest release, 2019’s somewhat topical Gnomes and
Badgers, includes Sly Stone-style social commentary
met with the usual sharp musicianship fans expect from
Denson. His best-known project, Karl Denson’s Tiny
Universe, returns to Eugene Jan. 19 at Sessions.
From Gnomes, there’s acid guitars on “Change My
Way,” plenty of Herbie Hancock grooves, and messages
of peace and solidarity on songs like “Can We Trade.”
According to Denson, he went into the album production
feeling frustrated with current affairs, and it showed up
in his music.
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Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe performs 8 pm Wednesday, Jan. 19, at
Sessions Music Hall; $25, 21+, proof of vaccination and masking required.
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“I needed to speak on it a little bit,” he says from Southern
California, while also offering his take on what to do about
it. “It’s really about dialogue — truth and wisdom, getting
back to that. You have to use a little intuition and wisdom
to communicate with people.”
Never idle, Denson, who’s been playing semi-
professionally since high school, has several additional
projects planned for 2022 beyond his run of dates with Tiny
Universe. He’s pushing his songwriting with a brand-new
project called Black Thor, set to release debut material
sometime this year, using a series of different vocalists.
There’s also Tiny Universe Presents: A Diesel Insane
Tour, playing the music of David Bowie rearranged, with
Rolling Stones backup singer Bernard Fowler on the mic
(Denson backed up the Stones on their recent run of
American dates).
Across all the different projects and styles of music
Denson plays, there has to be an element of funk, he says,
and digging into the work of other artists hones his own
skill as a songwriter.
“In good music, there’s something funky about it,”
he says. “That goes all the way through James Brown
to Johnny Cash. That’s my benchmark: Can I dance to
it? Does it make me happy? I try to keep it on that level.”
And referring to the Bowie project and his time playing
with the Stones, he adds, “It’s a chance for me and the band
to learn what other great artists created, and what makes
it good.” That creative wisdom is reflected in Denson’s
own work, he says. ■
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Across
1 Kerosene lantern material
6 Invitation’s request
10 Current measures?
14 Displeased with
15 “A Change is Gonna Come”
singer Redding
16 Cafe supplement
17 Basketball venue
18 Gymnastics gold medalist
who made news in 2021 as
the first Hmong-American
Olympian
20 Horror movie revived in
2021 (with a script co-written
by Jordan Peele)
22 “The ___ Ballerina” (Degas
work)
23 Luggage checkers, for
short
24 Crash maker
25 Low poker hand
28 Swampy land
32 Young ___ (small children)
33 British tennis star who
won the 2021 U.S. Open,
only the second Grand Slam
tournament she had entered
37 Full of energy
38 Judges’ gp.
39 Rampageous revelry
43 2021 documentary
directed by Questlove about
the 1969 Harlem Cultural
Festival
46 Dad joke, generally
49 Ed of “Up,” “Elf,” and “JFK”
50 Sanitizer’s target
51 Battery poles
54 Occupational suffix
56 Prepared potatoes, as for
hash browns
57 2021 Adele chart-topper
that broke records on
streaming services
62 2021 Netflix series that
made Lee Jung-jae a star
outside South Korea
65 Scheduled to arrive
66 Baseball scoreboard data
21 One of the Berenstain
Bears
24 Dance step syllable
25 Treat in collectible
dispensers
26 “___ seeing things?”
27 Rapscallion
29 Surname shared by two
Down
1 Auto financing co., formerly presidents
2 “Tomb Raider” protagonist 30 “American Idol” winner
Studdard
Croft
3 Yemeni port on the Red Sea 31 Sudden fright
34 Protagonist of the “Street
4 Course hazards
Fighter” series
5 Sticks around
35 Bounced-check abbr.
6 “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”
36 Shipping option that skips
detective Diaz
air travel
7 Shock and amaze
40 Eggs in the water
8 Diesel in an automotive
41 Moldova’s cont.
vehicle?
42 Shady tree
9 Pressure unit, briefly
44 Postgrad degrees
10 Warning signal
45 Metal minerals
11 California surfers’ mecca
12 Nursery rhyme merchant 46 “Winter Wonderland”
clergyman
13 Swipes
19 Person with intelligence? 47 Matchless
48 “Wait your turn!”
52 Jefferson, by belief
53 “Ed, ___ n Eddy” (Cartoon
Network series)
55 “Blame It on the Bossa
Nova” singer Gorme
57 Cast forth
58 Dynamic prefix
59 Court dividers
60 Swampland
61 Organic compound
63 Channel that aired “Lingo”
(which is pretty much what all
your Wordle results posts are)
64 ___ high level
67 Make Kool-Aid
68 First class, briefly
69 Squirrel’s home
70 Where a Yankee follows
November?
71 Ford’s failure
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