For those unaware, BT ALC Big Band recruited an all-star cast of guest players for their new album, Hearing The Truth, which will be released this Friday, April 14th, 2023 via the Vintage League Music label.

Band leaders Brian Thomas (trombone) and Alex Lee-Clark (trumpet) produced and arranged the nine original songs making up the group’s fifth album. Appearing across the album are such illustrious guests as G. Love, John Medeski, Karl Denson, Eric Krasno, Soulive’s Alan Evans and Lettuce members Nigel Hall, Adam Deitch and Eric “Benny” Bloom. Parts of the album were recorded remotely due to the pandemic, while others were later worked out during in-person sessions.

Furthermore, written by Thomas at the onset of the pandemic, “Bring Forth Change” features Evans and was released as a single. “This was the first tune we remotely recorded after the pandemic hit, and it really set the tone for what this album became,” Lee-Clark said. “Brian (Thomas) is one of the most positive forces I’ve ever come across, and the way he willed this whole thing into existence was amazing, and definitely gave all of us musicians a spirit boost as the reality of the pandemic set in.”

1. Dimples
2. Hearing The Truth
3. Here In This Cave
4. What Will You Do?
5. Egyptian Secrets
6. The Iguana
7. That Sound
8. Pound for Pound
9. Bring Forth Change

The Boston-based soul-jazz outfit open this vibrantly-hued, heartfelt and organically-woven new recording with the smoothly funky Dimples and the organ-fed Hearing The Truth and then brings us the earthy Here In This Cave and the free-flowing rhythms within What Will You Do? (which also spotlights Medeski on keyboards).

On an album that could so easily have been the soundtrack to Super Fly, along next is the uproarious, big band-imbibed Egyptian Secrets and the gently fervent The Iguana (which showcases Krasno’s guitar and Denson’s saxophone) and they are in turn backed nicely by the funky R&B rap of G. Love’s flows and rhymes on the Wu-Tang Clan-inspired That Sound, the album rounding out on the melodically ascending Pound for Pound, coming to a close on the uncompromisingly vivacious Bring Forth Change (which features Lettuce’s Nigel Hall and Eric “Benny” Bloom).

“This whole record was really written in the teeth of COVID, the 2020 presidential election, and the dizzying experience all of us Americans are feeling as we reckon with our past and decide as a country what we want to be in the future,”, Lee-Clark continues. “Through all those growing pains, there is a lot of noise. Everywhere you turn, you’re being inundated with new information, and it only seems to be getting faster.”

“The music on this album is all about slowing down just enough to hear the truth in the noise. Plus, more plainly, Hearing The Truth was written about Fox News, and all the charlatans on that network telling us not to believe the thing we’re seeing with our own eyes.”

BT ALC Big Band - Bring Forth Change featuring Alan Evans, Nigel Hall & Eric Bloom [Official Video]

www.btalc.com

BT ALC Big Band @ Facebook