The Fearless Flyers, Lettuce at Groove Summit

Groove Summit is bringing the funk to Napa for an unforgettable two-day outside party at Blue Note Summer Sessions at the Meritage Resort! This lineup is stacked with funk royalty, modern icons, and next-generation groove-makers. On Saturday, August 24th, get ready for the Northern California debut of The Fearless Flyers (featuring Cory Wong, Joe Dart, Mark Lettieri, and Nate Smith), a powerhouse quartet has been making waves with their virtuosic musicianship and high-energy live performances. Co-headliner and Modern funk titans Lettuce will heat up the stage ahead of Fearless Flyers, with the groundbreaking Fred Wesley and the New JB's opening the day of non-stop jams. Sunday, August 25th, keeps the funk going with performances by the supreme Tower of Power and the innovative Ghost-Note. Get ready for a celebration of funk and groove like no other! Events are OUTSIDE, RAIN OR SHINE. No Refunds or Exchanges. All Sales are Final.

LETTUCE is (a) the prime ingredient in a salad, (b) a slang for cash, (c) a green herb that can be smoked, (d) a genre-busting six-member musical collective formed in 1992 by four alumni of the prestigious Berklee College Of Music, or (e) all of the above. If you answered “e,” then you’re in on the sheer magic of a band that both feeds the rich history of funk music and combines it with strains of hip-hop, rock, psychedelia, jazz, soul, jam, go-go, and the avant-garde. The GRAMMY® Award-nominated six-piece is comprised of Adam Deitch [drums, percussion], Adam “Shmeeans” Smirnoff [guitar], Erick “Jesus” Coomes [bass], Ryan Zoidis [alto, baritone, tenor sax, Korg X-911], Eric “Benny” Bloom [trumpet, horns], and Nigel Hall [vocals, Hammond B-3, Rhodes, clavinet, keyboards]. To date, their discography includes Outta Here [2002], Rage! [2008], Fly [2012], Crush [2015], the EP Mt. Crushmore [2016], the live album Witches Stew [2017], Elevate [2019], Resonate [2020], Unify [2022], and now VIBE – a single 48 minute continuous session of pure, free-flowing improvisation, available digitally for the first time. With VIBE, Lettuce cement their status as boundary-pushing innovators over three decades into their lauded career, blurring lines and smashing up jazz chords, psychedelic passages, big horns, strains of soul and go-go, hip-hop elements for an uplifting, improvisational sound all their own. Ryan Zoidis explains, “we got into a vibe and hit record. 48 minutes went by like a blink of an eye. This is our first purely improvised recording. Nothing planned, nothing edited or overdubbed. This is a true spontaneous musical expression captured in its entirety.” All together now… Lett us VIBE.

Legendary bandleader, trombonist and author Fred Wesley is one of the forefathers of funk, still setting the standard with his jazz-funk band The New JBs. Together at its core for more than 30 years, the band is a living celebration of roots funk and more, performing such hits as “Pass the Peas” made with James Brown and the JBs including Maceo Parker, as well as selections from the P-Funk years and Fred’s own and others’ soulful jazz, funk and blues compositions. Born in Columbus, Georgia, and raised in Mobile, Ala., Fred began his career as a teenage trombonist with Ike and Tina Turner. He later was music director, arranger, trombonist and a primary composer for Brown from 1968-1975, then arranged for and played with Parliament-Funkadelic and Bootsy’s Rubber Band. With Brown, Fred became “the world’s most famous sideman, orchestrating the sinuous grooves and contributing the bold, surgically precise solos that defined the language of funk.” He helped take funk to the next level with George Clinton and Bootsy Collins. Fred has recorded a dozen solo albums including the cult favorite “House Party,” and his latest, “From The Blues and Back,” scheduled for official release in early 2024. He is featured in the Oscar-winning documentary “When We Were Kings” and countless other documentaries and books about funk, and gives master classes around the world. Fred’s critically acclaimed memoir “Hit Me, Fred: Recollections of a Side Man” (Duke University Press, 2002) chronicles in hilarious stories a half century of music history through the eyes of one of the world’s most-sampled musicians. Also a veteran of the Count Basie Orchestra, Fred has worked with scores of other artists, from Ray Charles to Trombone Shorty. His current other projects include the organ trio Generations and the klezmer-funk-hip hop unit Abraham Incorporated.