by Mike Lisching
Ghost-Note is an explosive, genre-blurring collective founded in 2014 by Snarky Puppy alumni and Grammy-winning percussionists Robert “Sput” Searight and Nate Werth. Rooted in the subtle power of rhythm, they embody their name, a reference to notes that are felt as much as heard. Equal parts technical mastery and dance-floor heat, the artists weave funk, hip-hop, jazz, Afrobeat, and world rhythms into a high-energy musical experience. On May 10, they will bring Peace, Love, and Funk to the Mill Valley Music Festival.
Since their debut, Ghost-Note has earned critical acclaim for their dynamic live shows, virtuosic musicianship, and fresh take on modern groove. Their 2015 debut album, Fortified, and 2018 follow-up Swagism topped the iTunes Jazz Charts and featured a diverse lineup of collaborators, from Kamasi Washington to Karl Denson. Their 2024 album Mustard n’ Onions further pushes the boundaries of funk fusion, showcasing their most daring compositions yet.
Their performances are a celebration of rhythm and movement, making them a favorite at international festivals including North Sea Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, and San Jose Jazz Summer Fest.
With infectious grooves, deep musical chemistry, and a mission to make people move, Ghost-Note is not just a band — it’s a rhythmic movement.
Static & Blur caught up with Nate Werth last week as the band is gigging in Louisiana. He was gracious enough to make time after a crazy 29 hours of travel coming in from Barcelona. Despite the long day of travel, he was in incredible spirits and excited to hit the stage that night.
Come, bring yourself, be free, have an open mind. Get ready to dance! Wear your comfortable shoes, and our slogan for the whole tour has just been “peace, love, and funk”.
That’s what Nate wishes for the fans when they join Ghost-Note at the Mill Valley Music Festival on May 10. Be ready for a high-energy show with all the positive vibes you can handle.
… it’s a blast bringing the show and touring Mustard n’ Onions. And just bringing our funky vibe all over the world.
We’re heavy on repeating a phrase or a section. And that becomes infectious and very addictive, and it pulls you in… Whether you’re a musician or you love music, or you’ve never heard of the band and don’t know what we sound like. But we’re a very engaging group, especially with the addition of our lead vocalist, and I think that it’s powerful. The music is powerful, the message is powerful. And we’re on this new journey together, and it feels very honest. It feels like it’s ours.
…This feels more like everything we’re doing is from a unit. We’re all taking a piece of the puzzle and putting it together and creating this powerful thing together. And I think that’s special when you’re creating your own language together. And Ghost-Note has that, and we’ve been developing it since day one of the band.
The band is touring Mustard n’ Onions, an album recorded over the pandemic, and before they added vocals to the band. So, for those familiar with the record, you will hear the album in a new light.
…And then Mustard n’ Onions. Very much is a nod to funk and groove, and we’re pulling in vocals, and everyone in the band is singing, whether it’s gang vocals, or background vocals, and harmonies. Sometimes, one of the guys take over the lead vocal… It’s really interactive on stage. And so I think it promotes this interaction between the crowd and the band.
We played those songs on the road, and we all start singing or writing vocals when we’re in the van driving to the next gig. It’s just a natural thing that happened. So now, when you hear Mustard n’ Onions. It doesn’t sound like the record.
The band began out of a desire for co-founders Nate and Robert “Sput” Searight wanting to do a project together, and “document our language together as drummer and percussionist”, but with each record and each tour, the band has continued to evolve and re-invent its own music. Nate continues talking about how the arrangements from Mustard n’ Onions have changed since its 2024 release.
There are new parts, and there are vocals and background vocals, and lyrics. And so it’s when a listener hears that that’s a fan of the record. They’re going to hear the song, and they’re gonna definitely love it. But it’s evolved already. And I think that’s something that’s natural for us to do, being musicians who are constantly wanting to recreate our own music.
It’s like when we play a cover. We don’t call it a “cover”. We call it a “blanket” because we create it. …We change the groove, we change the arrangement, the tempos, the harmonies, and so everything becomes different. But it’s still the song that inspired us. We like to do that with our own songs as well. To a point where it’s recognizable, and we’re not just like improvising lyrics on stage, but that’s not out of reach either.
In this group, we like to be free… We feel safe because Sput is such a great musical director, and if we get into something new on stage that night, we always know where we’re going to go, or if we don’t know where we’re going to go. We know we’re in good hands, with Sput leading us.
That desire to re-invent their music through improvisation is a core part of the band’s DNA and how they approach live performances.
It’s a party on stage.
In a festival situation, we tend to be a little more inventive with our music. There’s all that energy that’s already there, from other musicians playing and everyone’s gathering there for days or hours to share, and music be the focus. And so that definitely, when the vibe is in the air, it’s very easy for us to to take it there and and feel that. Whether it’s like, “Hey, Peter, take an intro on guitar before this song”. Then he starts playing something, and then Sput goes “Whoa! On 2”, and then we come in with a groove that we’ve never played before.
When writing new songs, that collaborative spirit and improvisation are baked into how they approach things. New songs often hit the stage before they are recorded.
We’re working on gathering songs for a studio record. I’ve written some songs and Sput’s written songs, and then we reach out to the guys and we say, “Submit your ideas and songs”… People do demos in Logic, and it’s a demo of their vision of the song, and then we send it to Sput… He’ll listen to it, and he does the arrangement of the song. Sometimes he co-writes the song. And so we put it through “the Sput”. The sput machine… The genius of Robert “Sput” Searight.
He (Sput) pumps it back out to us, and we start listening to these new demos. Then, while we’re on the road touring, if there’s 12 demo submissions for this next studio record, we may start playing like 3 or 4 of them live before we’ve recorded it. So in sound checks and things. But it’s listen to the demo, learn everything, learn all harmonies, learn all melodies. Then we just start picking away at it at a sound check and eventually perform it live.
Ghost-Note is a collaborative collective. No hard role boundaries, everyone contributes to every element, no wrong notes.
Everyone writes lyrics in the band, and everyone writes songs. I write lyrics and songs and melodies, and I’m a percussionist. So it doesn’t matter. Whatever your instrument is. Everyone in the band is a songwriter, and everyone in the band is a producer in their own right. I mean, it’s a pretty incredible group of musicians Sput and I have gathered. And we’re so lucky to have on our side and on team Ghost-Note.
The band is gearing up for summer dates across North America and Europe. Nate is excited to soak up some of the culture and is always looking to study and learn from other percussionists in a constant search for inspiration.
…(I enjoy) going places where we can connect with a culture that feels very different and unique. Especially going to Turkey is going to be wild with all the different percussion instruments. (When we are there) I connect with them(musicians) offstage. I’ll try and go see some local music, or reach out to some friends and local percussionists that I know from Snarky Puppy tours.
Nate recently moved to Barcelona for quality of life, but there is also a lot in Spain to inspire. There is a wonderful world of Spanish percussionists and a new culture to explore. The proximity to Africa is also huge, with rhythms ripe to incorporate into the Ghost-Note sound.
I mean, I studied West African like the area of Ghana most, and I’d love to go there. But I mean, there’s many places I want to go to. I want to go to Senegal. I want to go to Morocco. Those are just a few to name, and where, the rhythm is really fascinating and different, and the swing and the language is very intense. So I just want to get inspired and learn and hear that music, and then come back and make it my own thing.
Ghost-Note members are musical sponges, pulling inspiration from all over, and in some cases from unexpected places.
As a band, I would say, church. You know, a lot of people don’t realize that. But some of the biggest inspiration is that church funk, that R&B soul, but gospel.
We have an alter ego called the “Holy Ghost Note”. We’ll be playing, in a couple of days, late night here at Jazz Fest. We play old gospel songs that half of them, no one knows who wrote them. Because they’ve just been in the church for years and years and years and years and years. And so things like that are huge inspiration.
For me personally, it’s music from all around the world, India and Brazil, and even electronic music, like Aphex Twin.
With inspiration pulled from everywhere, the Ghost-Note name and what it means to the band may encapsulate how they think about collaborating and improvising.
We were trying to think of a name, and I woke up one morning, and I was like “This is it, Ghost-Note”. And for me, it was because we were capturing our communication and rhythm, and our groove. And what creates a groove is the space. And so Ghost-Note just felt so fitting, because it’s the everything in between the notes. And that’s where the real vibe is. That’s where the soul and the energy live… is in between the notes. It’s the glue, that invisible glue, that you feel, but you can’t see it, or touch it, or hear it. It’s just the space.
And that’s what really inspires us. We’ll be getting into something, and then I may be like “okay, play a little less, but keep that same intention and that same energy level”. When you create more space for the other musicians around you, it starts to create this really, really addictive sound.
Come see if you are going to be the next Ghost-Note addict May 10! Tickets on sale now at Mill Valley Music Festival.
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