Snarky Puppy is really the brainchild of bandleader Michael League they wanted something that was theirs.

Snarky Puppy got famous, or at least as famous as an ersatz jazz collective might hope to get, and Werth and Searight started thinking about their options. (It has since won successive Grammys for best contemporary instrumental album, in 20). Things changed after the group won a Grammy for best R&B performance for a 2013 collaboration with Lalah Hathaway. Festival dates, especially crucial for baby bands, were hard to come by. The sound was a restless mix of everything - jazz, fusion, jam rock, even pop - and jazz is a purity-conscious, closed-off world. Snarky Puppy released its debut in 2006 and has toured and recorded steadily ever since, but breakthrough success, and widespread respect from peers in the jazz community, initially eluded the band. It was about the music and the brotherhood.” There would be more people onstage than in the audience, but it was never about that. We'd play a show and five people would show up. We looked at him like, you want to play with us? We get in a white van and make nothing and sleep on floors because we can't afford hotels. He'd already played and produced with so many hip-hop and gospel artists. “We were like, ‘Get the hell out of here. When Searight agreed to join the group, everyone was surprised. He also had touring experience, which no one in Snarky Puppy had. Its members played jam sessions in Dallas and soon crossed paths with Searight, already a seasoned musician who had won a Grammy for his work with God's Property, a gospel choir then affiliated with Kirk Franklin. Werth joined Snarky Puppy while attending the University of North Texas. “I feel like I've been in the van for the last almost 12 or 15 years of my life, just building to this point,” Werth says in a recent phone interview. Werth and Searight are now starting over again, not at the bottom but close, with Ghost-Note, their newish, percussion-centric band, which plays the Promontory on Thursday night. Percussionist Nate Werth and drummer Robert “Sput” Searight spent more than a decade helping to build Snarky Puppy from a local Dallas jazz group to a repeat-Grammy-winning, fiercely beloved jazz-funk fusion collective.

Nate werth ghostnote