Seems like some other folks who attended the recordings (I was at 4 sessions) as well as Ground Up this year have filled in some of the details - but I'll just add the following: 19 musicians in the room each night, audience headphones had all of them in the mix, they did 8 days of two sessions each day. Through this run, they recorded every take of every song (then made the cuts afterward for what will eventually make the album). For those of us who were there multiple sessions - certain songs were heard multiple times - others not. According to what I heard Micheal say at these sessions (and backed up by Ground UP banter) - they got together about 10 days ahead of the first of these sessions and had only one fully formed demo (Justin Stanton -with Free Fall). The rest were a mix of iPhone voice memos, some charts, fragments etc. So - yeah, the talent in that room was off the charts. Interestingly - even with the volume of new material and compositions still in development, I only recall a couple false starts where players needed to get sorted on where something started etc. These cats are as impressive as they seem - especially up that close.

They got more gear in that room than most small music shops 😂 insanely talented people

That groove is so incredibly good they could have continued and allowed each member to take a solo haha I can't stop listening to this!

On this new album many of the band members had a chance to write songs. Mark Lettieri who is one of the guitar players wrote this particular song. The band leader and main composer is Michael League the bass player.

Your guess was right - flugelhorn + trumpet (with Harmon mute) is a classic sonic combination that the Snarky Horns do - beautiful sound

FYI: Snarky Puppy usually lists ALL the musicians and their respective instruments underneath the title in the ‘more’ section. The band was formed at North Texas University (formerly North Texas State University) which has been a Mecca for the finest jazz musicians for literally decades. The trumpet playing melody at the beginning was connected to what I believe is a Wa-Wa effects pedal.

I got to see this performed live at Amp pavilion on June 10th Rogers AR. (they were lead band before Steely Dan that night...yeah! great concert!!). They just released the song that day. I'm glad it's recorded because I couldn't wrap my brain around that when they performed it.

You know the joke going around is this song is at a level of such earworm and performance, that Mark should rename it "Hold our Beers." I saw them at Ground Up performing a lot of their new album Empire Central. It will probably be their Mona Lisa to date. It's that good.

Just to follow up on your plug-and-play comment, it isn’t like that. These guys have been playing together for a long time. Eighteen out of the nineteen of them have been with the Pups for at least a decade. A bunch of them have been with the band for 18 years. Jamison Ross, one of the 3 drummers, is the only new kid on the block. He’s only been around for about 4 years.

Bass clarinet and flugelhorn are correct

Wally Nemophila just dropped a new song today.