New Orleans, LA
Overall Rating
5.0
By MisterDigger
This band COOKED!!!
Karl Denson's Tiny Universe finally got my curiosity after all these years when they played at an outdoor festival that I could not attend. After watching YouTube videos of them performing, I then eagerly jumped on a reserved seat in the balcony of House Of Blues during Jazz Fest. This meant that I had to miss three major acts at Jazz Fest in the hours before this show, but this one far exceeded my expectations. I call it jazz rock funk and mostly instrumental. The 8 piece band absolutely COOKED. I ordered their latest CD when I got home.
In 2023, Karl Denson's Tiny Universe celebrate their 25th anniversary as a band.
KDTU has electrified audiences around the world from the fields of Naeba in Japan at the infamous Fuji Rock Festival to the hallowed stage of Madison Square Garden where they previously joined the Dave Matthews Band and The Godfather of Soul, James Brown. From performing as Sexual Chocolate (Karl was in the original band in the movie Coming To America and its sequel) at the Outside Lands Music festival in San Francisco, to being the first late night act at the inaugural Bonnaroo festival, KDTU have been a dominating force in music for the past 25 years.
All-night, sold-out concerts during Jazzfest in New Orleans have featured sit ins by everyone from Lenny Kravitz & Steve Winwood (with whom Karl has recorded and toured) to avant garde luminaries Marc Ribot & Boyfriend. Chuck Leavell and Bernard Fowler (Karl's bandmates in The Rolling Stones where Karl replaced the great Bobby Keys as saxophonist in 2014) have joined onstage and on record, as have Lukas Nelson, John Oates, Michael Franti, Warren Haynes, Ivan Neville, Anders Osborne, Big Daddy Kane, Roy Hargrove, Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley, Joshua Redman, Marcus King, and Bernie Worrell, among others.
Touring the country with the Allman Brothers, My Morning Jacket, D'Angelo, The Roots, Public Enemy, Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead, Parliament Funkadelic, Slightly Stoopid, Widespread Panic, very few concert goers have been untouched by the Tiny Universe live. In addition to KDTU, Karl Denson aka "Diesel" is a founding member of the seminal groove act The Greyboy Allstars.