When one thinks of a ghost, there’s an understanding that the figure represents a being that was once living but now continues to exist in the ether, on another plane.
Seth Applebaum’s Ghost Funk Orchestra switches that script: when the “group” began, it wasn’t a group at all; it was a solo recording project.
But New York-based Applebaum brought that project into the three-dimensional world, and today Ghost Funk Orchestra is a live psychedelic soul juggernaut. GFO comes to Moe’s Alley on Oct. 6.
Seth Applebaum spent most of his twenties fronting and playing guitar in punk and garage rock bands. “I got my feet wet playing live and touring,” he says.
But years of intense gigging left him feeling burnt out, so he decided to launch a project that would take him back to his roots.
“I grew up as a jazz and funk nerd,” he explains with a chuckle. “So I wanted to take some time and make recordings that got me back to that.”
The brief Applebaum gave himself was simple enough: “I wanted to make recordings of stuff that would have no business in the bands I was playing with,” he says. “It was really an outlet for me to keep [that music] alive.” His aims for the music extended no further than that kind of modest-scale self expression. “It was purely meant to be [just] me screwing around with tape machines.”
Those initial home studio recordings still had elements of his more recent past. “They were rough and guitar-forward,” Applebaum says, “but they were exploring the jazz-funk side of things.”
He made a few EPs of his original music, handling songwriting, arrangement, production and playing nearly all of the instruments. “I did have a few collaborators, mostly on vocals,” he says.
Shared with friends, those recordings got a positive reaction. Eventually, Applebaum recalls, he “threw them up on Bandcamp and didn’t do much else with them.” That could have been the end of the story, but in short order he began receiving messages. More and more people heard his home recordings and asked when he was going to put a band together and bring this music to live performance.
Applebaum’s music as Ghost Funk Orchestra was informed by a heady mix of ’70s funk, psychedelic rock, soul jazz and more. A live project would require highly skilled musicians who could realize his carefully developed arrangements while bringing the interactive energy that can only come from live performance.
Tentatively at first, Applebaum attempted to create a living, breathing version of the music he had been making at home. “It took a lot of trial and error to figure out what the live band was supposed to look and sound like,” he admits.
But once he got the mix right, Ghost Funk Orchestra was born as a live, performing unit, with a lineup ranging from eight to 12 musicians. And while it had been something of an afterthought, the live band yielded an unexpected dividend. “The momentum from playing live shows kept the recording-project side moving forward,” Applebaum says. “It became a cycle, and a kind of all-consuming creative monster.”
Live onstage, Ghost Funk Orchestra does more than re-create the studio recordings, now numbering eight albums, four EPs and a string of singles. And that’s by design, Applebaum says. “I arrange the music differently; the live version of the band is a more energetic, amped-up experience than the recordings.”
On record, GFO can explore the subtleties within a sultry and cinematic track like “Achluo” from 2024’s A Trip to the Moon. “I like to provide a lot of ‘ear candy’ for the headphone listener,” Applebaum says. “Some songs that I’ve recorded, I have no real intention of ever playing live.” But some of those cuts have found their way onto film soundtracks. “Our instrumental songs often get licensed for use in surf and snowboard movies, and in extreme sports documentaries,” he says. And despite its title, GFO’s slinky and hypnotic 2018 track, “Walk Like a Motherfucker,” has found its way into several films.
In front of an audience, the sassy and kinetic ’60s rave jazz found on cuts like Ghost Funk Orchestra’s “Where To?” is the preferred approach. Since becoming a live act, GFO has played major festivals—Montreal Jazz, Telluride Jazz, Idaho’s indie-rock Treefort and others—and secured high-profile spots on bills with fellow groundbreaking yet hard-to-classify acts like Brazil’s Os Mutantes, Marco Benevento and The Nude Party. The band’s current tour itinerary takes it back and forth across the North American continent.
Applebaum feels that with Ghost Funk Orchestra, he has (perhaps unintentionally) struck upon a perfect balance. The albums, EPs and singles give him the creative space to express his musical ideas, and the live band brings those ideas to the stage in a thrilling context. Ultimately, though, it’s all about one thing: “I’m just trying to make music that I would want to listen to,” he says.
Ghost Funk Orchestra with opening act The Silvertones
8pm on Oct. 6 at Moe’s Alley
1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz.
Tickets $25/adv, $25/door.
moesalley.com
