DEBUT ALBUM STREAMING NOW!!!

Green and Gold, the debut album from Roccadile, delivers a sultry sonic brew that melds dueling influences from the funk Meccas of New Orleans and Oakland with vintage soul to create timeless grooves. “It’s got that blend of jazz and funk,” notes bandleader/bassist Jenelle Roccaforte. “I think our music blurs the lines. I call it Neo-Soul-Funk; I think that implies there’s jazz involved as well.” Born into a musical family, and growing up playing guitar from age 10, Roccaforte eventually found her calling as a bass player. “I studied jazz guitar in college but in my last two years I became very interested in the role of bass. By sheer luck, an upright bass was given to me by a touring bassist who needed a place to store it. I started playing it, fell in love with it, and switched to bass and completed my degree on bass. I’d been playing bass since I was 16, but didn’t embrace it until I got that upright. I started playing in funk bands in Oakland and jazz bands in San Francisco. It changed everything for me, my world opened up a lot. In order to pursue bass even further and become as good a musician as I’d like to be, I moved to New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz and funk; that’s where I really dug in, dove headfirst into funk, and started writing and playing my own music every night of the week.” Roccadile reads like a soul-funk version of 3-D chess, with musical touchstones from James Brown to Steely Dan visible from one angle and Jill Scott and Al Green bisecting them from another. Green and Gold is as smooth as it is nasty, a brilliant debut that ricochets around your head long after the album’s done.

-Larry Kay of Night Train PR