Glide Magazine Feature

Scone Cash Players, the Miami-based group led by longtime Daptone Hammond legend Adam Scone, are expanding the limits of what people think and expect when they hear organ music. With his organ acting as lead singer, Scone and his cosmic choir serve up a funky, genre-bending experience that will take you on a trip to the outer limits of the soul-jazz universe. Between tours of South America, Europe and all across the United States, the group has released three full-length albums. Their 2018 debut, Blast Furnace (reissued by Colemine Records in 2022) followed by the well-received As the Screw Turns and The Mind Blower. Their new album, the brazilian-influenced Brooklyn to Brooklin (Daptone Records) was recorded and produced at Penrose Studios in Riverside, CA by Daptone cofounder Gabriel Roth (a.k.a. Bosco Mann). Named after the NYC borough and corresponding São Paulo locale, this album is Scone Cash Players’ most meticulously made recording to date. It reflects Scone’s recent trips to Brazil, first with soul legend Lee Fields, where he imbibed the soulful, vital sounds of artists like Jorge Ben, Tim Maia and the psychedelic flourishes of Os Mutantes. Blend that with expressive horn arrangements, raw, bluesy guitar and that screaming B3 sound following in the tradition of legends like Dr. Lonnie Smith, Brother Jack McDuff, and Jimmy Smith to name a few…and you’ve got hard-driving psychedelic soul that only the Scone Cash Players can deliver. When he’s not making solo albums as Adam Scone (most recently the simmering Low & Slow) he’s at it with Scone Cash Players, spinning sounds that are modern but rooted in that purist Hammond sound: drawbars, Leslie cabinet, bass lines, trills and tremolos and accents and flourishes in the authentic soul-jazz vernacular. To round out the vocal arrangements, Scone enlists multiple singers for an aesthetic reminiscent of Freddie Roach’s All That’s Good, Donald Byrd’s A New Perspective and Dizzy Gillespie’s Souled Out – among other obscure gems. An Ohio native, Scone lives and breathes the organ tradition. Getting his start playing in and around the Cleveland and Youngstown music scenes, the use of “Players” in the band’s moniker is a tip-of-the-cap to local legends The Ohio Players. In addition to appearing on over 50 recordings, Scone has also accompanied jazz/boogaloo legend Lou Donaldson at the Village Vanguard and the Blue Note on the organ bench once occupied by Dr. Lonnie Smith. He’s also performed with the likes of Jimmy Cobb, Melvin Sparks, George Braith and Ben Dixon, to name a few. He has stories to spare from his years touring with blues-rockers JJ Grey & Mofro, not to mention soul legends The Sugarman 3, Naomi Shelton and Sharon Jones. After years of heavy sideman work in New York, he relocated to Miami in 2015 and began to focus more exclusively on Scone Cash Players, in an audacious bid to take the world of funk and groove by storm. Tracklist

1. Cold 40s

2. In Our Hands

3. Anadira

4. Brooklyn to Brooklin

5. All These Bad Things

6. What’s Her Name?

7. It Wasn’t Meant to Be

8. Night Ballads

9. Golden State

10. Laughing Because