The Motet is bringing its funk, soul and jazz-influenced sound to the opening night of the three-day Tucson Gem & Jam Festival, taking the audience on what founder Dave Watts called a psychedelic and cathartic journey through different musical concepts.
Watts, who founded the group in Denver, Colorado, in 1998, shared what the audience should expect when the band takes the late-night headlining stage on Friday, Feb. 3.
“A later set” — the band goes on at 10:45 p.m. — “and a venue like Gem & Jam is always appropriate for us to do our instrumental exploratory side of our sound,” Watts said.
Watts and his versatile electronic dance music group are making a return visit to the festival, which Watts said is always a pleasurable experience for them.
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The band is touring on its just released album “All Day,” their first instrumental record since 2009.
“It’s really satisfying for us to be able to put out an album that really features the band,” he said.
Watts handles the drums for The Motet with Joey Porter on the keys, Garrett Sayers on bass, Drew Sayers on saxophone and Ryan Jalbert on guitar.
After vocalist Lyle Divinsky and trumpet player Parris Fleming left the band during the pandemic, Watts decided to focus the group more on its instruments.
Creating sounds that are different is what the group strives towards, and their traversing music between funk, soul, jazz and rock does just that. Watts prefers his music to have a more alternative arrangement, making the next beat unpredictable.
“We’ve gotten into more sort of synthesizer music,” he said, explaining that the group’s new focused style would have been prevalent in the groove and funk-oriented 1980s or ’90s.
Watts said his bandmates have embraced the new direction and it feels really good.
Besides a stimulating and elating audiovisual dance fest, Gem & Jam presents more than just a euphonious experience for guests.
“There’s a certain spiritual side,” Watts said, adding that the festival’s audience really likes to lose themselves and the band tends to cater to that.
“We’ll explore whatever vortex in the area happens at that time,” he said.
The Motet is on a lineup that includes LSDREAM, which also is focused on the psychedelic side of music, and the jam band The String Cheese Incident.
“Whenever we are back in town together it feels like a family affair,” Watts said of being on the lineup with The String Cheese Incident, which also is based in Colorado. The bands share 20 years of history, he said.
“We’re excited to get down somewhere different like Tucson,” Watts said.
AP reports that the Grammy Awards are adding five new categories. They are best spoken word poetry album, best Americana music performance, best alternative music performance, best score soundtrack for video games and other interactive media and songwriter of the year. The songwriter of the year award is different from the song of the year award in that it will recognize the “most prolific” non-performing and non-producing songwriter’s body of work. They must also have written at least five songs.
Madison R. Carney is a University of Arizona journalism student apprenticing with the Star.
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