DeWayne McKnight

DeWayne McKnight, Vienna 2009

DeWayne "Blackbyrd" McKnight (born April 17, 1954 in Los Angeles , California ) is an American guitarist of fusion jazz and p-funk . He himself describes his music as progressive funk rock .

Live and act

McKnight made his first recordings in 1973 with Charles Lloyd ( Geeta, Morning Sunrise ), with whom he also toured in the early 1970s. From 1975 to 1978 he played electric guitar with The Headhunters of Herbie Hancock , with whom he recorded Survival of the Fittest (1975) and Straight from the Gate (1978) (as well as Herbie Hancock Man-Child and Flood-Live in) Japan 1975), and then until 2008 with Parliament and Funkadelic by George Clinton and other Clinton projects such as Brides of Funkenstein . From 1980 to 2008 he was the musical director of Parliament / Funkadelic.

He also played with Sonny Rollins (on Nucleus 1975), Bennie Maupin , Macy Gray , Ron Wood and Bernard Fowler , Shuggie Otis , Melvin Gibbs , Fishbone, Wyzard of Mothers Finest and Bill Laswell .

In 1988 he was also briefly the guitarist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and played on their album Out in LA (1994). From 2007 he also played solo in the area of ​​the Knitting Factory and in 2008 co-founded the band SocialLybrium with Bernie Worrell . In 2009 his debut album was released as a soloist bout funkin` time . McKnight, who also played with Miles Davis , belongs to the reunion band The Miles Electric Band , which consists of musicians from Miles Davis.

Web links

• Homepage
• Discogs
• interview

Individual evidence

1. ^ Review by Sean Westergaard, Allmusic
2. ↑ Miles Electric Band ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.