Naughty Professor Debuts Its "Good Things" at French Quarter Festival

Naughty Professor, by Emily Ferretti

The New Orleans jazz-funk band broadens their musical horizons on their new EP.

[Updated] “Rush Hour,” the first track from Naughty Professor’s new EP Good Things, signals an intriguing possible future. The band will play French Quarter Festival’s Jack Daniel’s Stage Saturday at 6:40 p.m., and the song clearly lives in the jazz-funk world that the band has inhabited for the past decade, but the composition moves like a Lalo Schifrin soundtrack album from the ‘70s condensed into four minutes. A corkscrewed sax line defines the theme, echoed by a mysterioso guitar line that signals danger ahead, accompanied at points by some straightforward, wakka-wakka chase theme funk, all with a steady compositional hand. 

“Rush Hour” is a collaboration with djembe player Weedie Braimah, and it changes the dynamic last exhibited on 2020’s Everyday Shredder. On it and much of Naughty Professor’s previous work, the head arrangement feels like a vehicle to get the band to the solo section where the pieces came to life. “Rush Hour” doesn’t need solos to feel alive; if they exist in the track, they’re so thoroughly integrated that they sound composed. There’s more room to move in “Waltz” and “Kings,” which round out the the three-song EP, but none of them exist as platforms to launch a thousand solos. The hint of prog in the album’s aesthetic nudges Naughty Professor into a more distinctive space in New Orleans, where you can’t shake a tree without having a horn-first funk band fall out. 

You can hear the band taking a step in this direction on Everyday Shredder’s “Masenko.” It’s not as tightly constructed, but the textural balance between the gnarled guitar line and the airier horns that answer its phrases give the song the kind of tension that defines Good Things, so much so that when space clears in “Kings” and soloists including guest saxophone player Skerik move into it with relish, the moment feels magical and the playing has impact. 

Each song on Good Things has a guest—Snarky Puppy keyboard player Shaun Martin plays on “Waltz”—and that might lead to a scattered sound if a shared and contemporary governing aesthetic didn’t run through the three tracks. It feels like an EP in dialogue with Snarky Puppy, BadBadNotGood, and other bands broadening the chops-intensive jazz-funk space. If the EP really is a second step in a more prog and composed direction, it has me curious as to what comes next because the room to grow that it creates is clear.,

Updated April 23, 5:50 p.m.

Shaun Martin is the keyboard player for Snarky Puppy, not the guitarist as originally printed. The piece has been updated.

Updated April 26, 10:55 a.m.

Naughty Professor will play the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival presented by Shell on Friday, April 29 at 11:20 a.m. on the Shell Gentilly Stage.