Lenny White To Release First Solo Album in 10 Years, featuring Stanley Clarke and Victor Bailey
Return to Forever drummer Lenny White has announced his first solo album in a decade, Anomaly. White will be joined by bassists Stanley Clarke and Victor Bailey, and a host of others.
Anomaly finds White returning to his pioneering jazz-rock roots that helped to define the early 70’s fusion movement, and looking forward.
“We need to restart a revolution so that we can take back the music and stop the fluff,” says White. “I’m hoping that this new album is a representation of that ideal.”
White is coming off successful worldwide tours with Return To Forever (2008) and Corea/Clarke/White and the Stanley Clarke Trio with Hiromi (2009), and decided it was time to record his tenth album as a leader.
The complete line up for Anomaly includes guitarists Jimmy Herring (Widespread Panic), Nick Moroch (a former member of White’s Astral Pirates), David Gilmore, Tom Guarna and David Bendeth, keyboardists George Colligan, Bernard Wright, Donald Blackman (another Astral Pirate) and Vince Evans, and in addition to Clarke and Bailey, bassists Richie Goods and Charles Fambrough.
White originally broke into the jazz world in 1968 with saxophonist Jackie McLean before landing a gig with Miles Davis in 1969 for the landmark album, Bitches Brew.
“I was fortunate when I started to make music,” reflects White. “I made music at the same time that Igor Stravinksy was making music, at the same time that Jimi Hendrix and James Brown were making music, at the same time that Duke Ellington and Miles Davis and John Coltrane were making music. Led Zeppelin co-existed at the same time that Return To Forever did. I listened to all that music and was influenced by all of it. So now when I put together an eclectic project I sometimes hear people say, ‘Oh man, what is he trying to do?’ But the truth is, I’m not trying to do anything. I’m just representing the music that I came up listening to.”
Anomaly will be released in April by Abstract Logix and is available for pre-order.
