In July, members of Snarky Puppy played three gigs as part of Spain’s Canarias Jazz & Más festival, but when the fusion outfit hits Baycare Ballpark on Sunday it’ll mark the band’s first show back on a U.S. stage after a long, pandemic-induced, hiatus.
“That was the first time that the band had seen each other since the beginning of the pandemic, but the band is 18 people and we only play with 10 of those at every gig,” Michael League told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. League—the band’s 37-year-old bassist and bandleader—spent much of his lockdown in the south of Spain at his girlfriend’s house where he finished a long-delayed solo album, So Many Me.
Clearwater Jazz Holiday
w/Snarky Puppy/Gloria Gaynor/Kool & the Gang/Big Bad Voodoo Daddy/Lettuce/Dustbowl Revival/Lucy Woodward/Eric Marienthal Featuring The Silverman Brothers/Gumbi Ortiz & Electric Rendezvous/Gloria West & the Gents/more
Thursday-Sunday. Oct. 14-17. $10-$200
Gates at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, 3:45 p.m. Friday, and 3 p.m. Saturday-Sunday
Baycare Ballpark. 601 Old Coachman Rd, Clearwater.
clearwaterjazz.com
“In Clearwater, I'll be seeing people that I haven't seen in two years, and they'll see each other for the first time in two years so it'll still feel like the first gig after the pandemic in a lot of ways,” he added.
Similarly, Snarky Puppy’s set closing down the 2021 Clearwater Jazz Holiday is going to feel like the first gig back for so many of the organizers behind the storied festival.
Like everything else last year, the 2020 Jazz Holiday got the axe at the hands of coronavirus. Instead of the usual four-day party that welcomed 35,000-40,000 people annually, organizers staged a series of small “Wanderlust” concerts which not only allowed the festival to keep paying local artists and backline crew, but also let it continue to support its nonprofit mission of boosting music education in local schools.
Headliners for 2021’s four-day festival include Grammy-winning Snarky Puppy, Gloria Gaynor backed by a 13-piece band, Kool & the Gang and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Continuing the festival’s tradition of mixing Americana, funk and other genres into the jazz programming, the lineup also includes Dustbowl Revival, Lucy Woodward, plus Eric Marienthal Featuring The Silverman Brothers.
Saturday’s lineup brings a jam band element to the mix thanks to Lettuce, but Jazz Holiday stil also leans on the very things it was founded upon, jazz and community outreach. The Jazz Holiday and Ruth Eckerd Hall Youth Jazz Band will play on Saturday, and Friday’s lineup finds Jason Miles leading a jam-packed tribute to pioneering jazz-funk saxophonist Grover Washington Jr. who died in 1999 at age 56.
Other highlights on the lineup include Gumbi Ortiz, a farewell show for Tampa Bay jazz singer Gloria West (playing a “Last Hurrah” set on Friday before her previously announced hiatus from performing), saxophonist Eric Marienthal and Ariella McManus who Victor Wooten described as one of his all-time favorites.
Having Snarky Puppy—which made its local debut with a show at Crowbar in Ybor City in 2014—share the Sunday bill with Woodward leaves the door open for some major collaboration (she appeared locally with a Snarky Puppy side project Forq back in 2018), but it also showcases Jazz Holiday’s approach to bringing other genres to the bill (funky Americana band Dustbowl Revival plays Sunday along with soul and funk unit Lemon City Trio).
And while 2021 marks a return to a large-scale festival for Clearwater Jazz Holiday, the festivities will also feel much different.
Right now, the 42-year-old festival’s regular home, Coachman Park, is under renovation as part of the “Imagine Clearwater” project, which is, in part, bringing a 4,000-seat amphitheatre to the downtown waterfront. That led Jazz Holiday to Baycare Ballpark—the Spring Training home of the Philadelphia Phillies and Philly’s Low-A minor league affiliate Clearwater Threshers—just under five miles away.
Clearwater Jazz Holiday CEO Steve Weinberger told CL there is a strong likelihood that the festival will once again partner with the ballpark again in 2022, but he feels like Imagine Clearwater could be completed by the next year, meaning that October 2023 would be the timing of when the festival returns to its home.
For now, organizers and the volunteers that make it happen are focused on “reduced-capacity special presentation” of Jazz Holiday that allows for social distancing thanks to a general admission seating arrangement that lets fans purchase tickets into a section in the seating bowl, then sit wherever in that section. “Each section is not sold to full capacity so there'll be plenty of space for people to spread out,” Weinberger added.
The VIP section is made up of about 400 bistro-style tables spread across the playing field. Other admission options include $10 “standing room” tickets that allow access to the grass berm behind the stage along with the general concourse complete with picnic tables and hightops. Not including volunteers and the small number of folks in executive level suites for the festival’s corporate partners, Clearwater Jazz Holiday could welcome just over 6,000 attendees to Baycare Ballpark each night.
But planning a festival’s return to the live setting is no walk in the park. Weinberger would not say whether or not he’ll shed a tear during Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” but did surrender that the last 18 months have been emotional for the festival organizers.
“The festival tradition means a lot to so many people for so many different reasons. There's a tremendous sense of community and volunteerism around it, and we had to cancel the big show last year,’ Weinberger said. While Jazz Holiday kept the spirit alive with “Wanderlust” shows, coming back in this fashion means even more.
“I think there's going to be a tremendous sense of pride—there always is—when we're all together, and we look back and we look out over the people, and we see what we've accomplished, what it means for the community,” Weinberger said. “So yeah, when the first note is struck, I think that eyes are gonna well up from all of our organizers who’ll know, ‘We did it.’ And we can't wait to do it again.”
Weinberger won’t be alone in his emotions.
In Spain, League—who landed back in the U.S. late last month and immediately got to work on an album with David Crosby, Becca Stevens, and Michelle Willis—watched the U.S. handling of the pandemic unfold from afar.
While League’s got a firm grip on a lifestyle (and military childhood) that kept him on the road until the pandemic hit, Clearwater Jazz Holiday will be the first time he’ll see his mom, aunt, uncle and cousins in about two years—by a longshot, the longest time he’s spent away from them.
Last March, League lost his Tarpon Springs-based grandmother after her 100th birthday. “She was really the matriarch, so experiencing the family dynamic without her will be very very different. She was a real character,” he said. Soon after, League’s uncle passed; one member of Snarky Puppy lost three family members.
So Sunday’s set represents three reunions for League—one with family, another with bandmates and the one Snarky Puppy gets to have with fans. League said he’s even staying in town an extra day to stuff his face with Greek food and ouzo in Tarpon Springs.
“It'll be great to see everybody. I can't wait to see my mom and my family, and to play with my brothers and sisters in Snarky Puppy again,” League said. “We have so many years together, so it’ll be great to catch up with everybody in person even if it's just one show.”
Just one show indeed, but one we’ve all been waiting on for a long, long time.
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