Prolific New Orleans bassist George Porter Jr., will be releasing a brand new instrumental album entitled Porter’s Pocket with his longstanding quartet the Runnin’ Pardners available via Color Red on February 7, 2025. Porter Jr is joined by his longtime collaborator keyboardist Michael Lemmler (Jubilation, TriFunctA), drummer Terrence Houston (The Funky Meters, Toubab Krewe), and newest member Chris Adkins (Raphael Saadiq, Mark Broussard) on guitar. Today, listeners get another taste of what the help entails with the uptempo, bluesy "Don Julio Rides Again." Listen to the new single HERE.
Porter was a founding member of The Meters and a lifelong session musician, notably acting as Allen Toussaint’s go-to bass player throughout the 60s and 70s. Declared by Pitchfork as “one of the greatest bass players who has ever lived,” and consistently finding himself atop Bass Player Magazine and Rolling Stone’s “Top 50 bassists of all-time”, Porter was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018 for his influential work with New Orleans funk progenitors The Meters.
Like many of the songs on the album, "Don Julio Rides Again" was cultivated during Porter Jr & Runnin' Pardners' longstanding residency at the renowned local favorite Maple Leaf Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana. It starts with a cascading intro guitar riff from Adkins before a vamp passes the baton to Lemmler to take over the riff on organ. It's chock full of qualities stedfast fans of The Meters and rare-groove vinyl crate diggers alike have come to enjoy: a fat New Orleans pocket, funky Hammond organ, and locked in drum breaks from Houston that allows his Runnin’ Pardners band to really drive the track while George does what he does best: holding down the rhythm.
An innovator of funky music, Porter gives credit to his hometown, “Before there was ‘funk’ as people call it, New Orleans musicians always had a way of using rhythm in a way nobody else was. I am just a student of Earl King and George French and that musical school and somewhere along the way, people out there decided it was ‘funk.’
In addition to his Monday night Maple Leaf residency, Porter Jr is appearing at Denver Comes Alive at Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom in Denver, CO performing the music of Poppa Funk & The Night Trippers tonight and Crescent City Classics tomorrow. Porter will have key performances at Jam Cruise, Suwannee Amp Jam #1, and New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
For more information and a complete list of George Porter Jr. 's tour dates, visit georgeporterjr.com.
