When it comes to locking down a groove, Huney Knuckles is as tough as they come. The scrappy East Bay combo has emerged in recent years as one of the most dependably funky bands on the local jazz-fusion scene, and word is starting to spread.
The group is built on the hi-octane bounce of an irresistible tandem pairing well-traveled drummer Darian Gray with Jazz Mafia mademan Kevin Wong, who covers both keyboard and low-end duties on keybass—with his left hand. Guitarist Brian Sheu alternates between blazing lead lines and telegraphic rhythm work, while saxophonist Tony Peebles delivers cresting solos and punchy riffs with aplomb. He earned a Grammy Award as a member of Pacific Mambo Orchestra.
Huney Knuckles often plays as an instrumental combo, but on special gigs they’re joined by veteran soul crooner Tony Lindsay, who spent some two decades singing with Santana, and vocalist/saxophonist Eddie M, who toured with Prince during the Purple Rain era and went on to work with Sheila E.
After spending much of his career playing wedding and church gigs to pay the bills, “One of my favorite things about being a musician is playing festival-type events,” says Wong, who grew up in Palo Alto. “We got in once we started playing with Tony Lindsay, which brought a lot more attention.”
The vocalists will be on hand for a July 25 hit at Almost Famous Wine Company in Livermore. Like so many bands, Huney Knuckles came together in the aftermath of the pandemic shutdown, when Wong was looking for a situation to develop his own music. It was more of a lark than a serious endeavor until he landed a gig at Black Star Pirate BBQ in 2021, when it was still located in the remote Point San Pablo Harbor. The live-performance scene was just getting restarted, and he took the gig even though it paid peanuts. The band walked away with more than $400 in tips.
“We came in cold, and I didn’t have high expectations,” he recalls. “But I was instantly floored by how good it sounded. I thought, ‘Now I can put the time in for impeccable charts.’”
The addition of Peebles, a highly respected player, upped the band’s game. On faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory’s Roots, Jazz and American Music program, he’s toured internationally playing jazz, Latin jazz, funk, soul and roots reggae. The release of the 2023 EP Scuffle helped define Huney Knuckles’ trademark sound, with punchy horns bobbing and weaving over bright, bare-fisted beats.
Until she went off to study at Juilliard last year, trumpeter Skylar Tang was also in the mix, infusing the arrangements with a jolt of youthful energy and precocious, improvisational prowess. For Wong, the band has become his primary creative focus, but he hasn’t given up his regular church gig.
He’s maintained a steady Sunday morning practice for some two decades, most recently holding down the organ chair in Richmond’s Living Word Ministries Community Church. When he started performing in a gospel choir as an adolescent he played saxophone, but before long Wong was recruited to play organ. “[S]o I was doubling on keys,” he says. “You have to take the chair that’s open. But I was terrible. If you didn’t grow up hearing all of those songs a million times, it’s hard to fit in.”
The demand for competent church organists, however, tends to outstrip the supply, so he worked steadily, including a long-running East Oakland gig at Peter’s Rock Deliverance Church of God In Christ. The Pentecostal congregation was often filled with the spirit, and prayer sessions could last five hours without a break.
“It’s like language immersion,” Wong says. “There is no sink. You can only swim. I still don’t know all the music, but I got the feeling. You have to be ready to follow the preacher. Everything and anything can change at a moment’s notice.”
He gave up the saxophone to focus on the keybass, and has developed his own approach to the instrument inspired by the combo Soulive. He doesn’t think of himself as an accompanist. He figures out how to fill in textures and riffs when he’s not soloing, but mostly he concentrates on maintaining a nasty, persuasive groove. With Huney Knuckles he’s seized the moment and sweetly pounded it into his own particular image.
“What happened to me is I spent too much of my life not being involved in writing the material, being another chef in the kitchen,” he says. “When I started this band I never envisioned that I can now make the bed that I sleep in.”
Upcoming gigs include June 18 at The Cook & Her Farmer in Oakland; June 19 at Menlo Park’s Guild Theatre, opening for Amy Winehouse tribute project Valerie; and July 23 at Madrone Art Bar in San Francisco, where the band holds down a monthly fourth-Thursday residency. And in something of a breakthrough, Huney Knuckles earned a spot at the High Sierra Music Festival, July 2-5 at a Hop Monk Tavern battle of the bands.
