Soule Monde features the dynamic tandem of drummer Russ Lawton and organ player Ray Paczkowski. The two musicians also appear in the Trey Anastasio Band and in 2020 launched a trio project LaMP, with Scott Metzger (Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, WOLF!, Circles Around The Sun). As Lawton told Relix in 2018, “Ray’s a great collaborator and improviser, so we’ve written many instrumental songs together that really grow the more we play them live.” Earlier this year the duo entered Sugarhouse Studios in Waitsfield, VT to record a new album of ebullient jazz and funk originals.

Lawton looks back on the group’s origins, noting, “Soule Monde came about after Ray and I had been playing together in TAB for all these years. I’ve always been a big fan of the Hammond organ. I would run into Ray when we weren’t touring and mentioned getting together to play at the club Slidebrook in Waitsfield, Vt. that had a house Hammond. So we got together for one rehearsal and played a show. It went so well that it turned into a once-a-month gig. From there, we would get together to learn some more of Ray’s songs or I would bring in different funk, African or Latin-influenced grooves that we turned into songs.”

As for the new record, Paczkowski adds, “Mimi Digs It is a 2021 distillation of the rhythmic and melodic ideas Soule Monde has been grooving to since our collaboration began in 2008. I would call it a manifesto of sorts, a precision snapshot of our ongoing project: to make music that reinvents itself at every playing.”

Today we premiere the official video for the opening track from Mimi Digs It, which is now available at the Soule Monde website.