Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings Play Wells Fargo Center for the Arts Tonight

Today, Wells Fargo Center for the Arts (50 Mark West Springs Road) announced GRAMMY Award-nominated funk/soul band Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings will perform in Santa Rosa for one night only tonight, November 3, 2015 at 7:30 p.m. Their stop at the Center features material from their 2014 Grammy Award nominated album, Give the People What They Want. Tickets for Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings go on sale Today, Friday, June 12 at noon and may be purchased for $49 and $39 online at wellsfargocenterarts.org, by calling 707-546-3600, and in person at the box office at 50 Mark West Springs Road in Santa Rosa.

While other artists have ridden the waves of passing fads, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings (drummer Homer Steinweiss, guitarists Binky Griptite and Joe Crispiano, conguero Fernando Velez, trumpet player Dave Guy, tenor saxophonist Neal Sugarman, baritone saxophonist Cochemea Gastelum, and bassist/producer Bosco Mann) have bypassed the hype-and-hit superhighway and taken a detour straight to the hearts of their listeners, delivering a visceral rhythm and soul sound to an ever-expanding fan base. The band has traveled the world for more than a decade, blowing minds with their explosive live performances and their raw, hand-crafted studio recordings. The prolific survivor that she is, Sharon Jones has fully recovered from a 2013 cancer diagnosis and bounced back with one biggest years of her career in 2014 capped off by a Grammy nomination for her album, "Give the People What They Want".

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings formed out of the ashes of Desco Records, a fiercely independent label that developed an international underground following for releasing hard funk vinyl in the nineties. After the label's demise in 1999, the family of musicians that populated its roster regrouped to form an all-star band that would become the core of the Daptone Records stable.

Over the next ten years, the band toured vigorously, crafting electrifying shows that brought packed rooms to rapture, leaving only dropped jaws and sweat drenched dance floors behind them. They continued to record albums and 45's to critical acclaim and public delight, and with each successive release found themselves in bigger and bigger rooms. Tremendous success on TV would follow, with the Dap-Kings appearing on The Colbert Report, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Conan, as the house band for Comedy Central's Night of Too Many Stars, and as performers on 2012's VH1 Divas. Beyond their own records and performances, others have tapped them consistently for a sound that simply cannot be found elsewhere.

However, with all of the commitments and distractions of success, the band has never lost focus on their objective: bringing their music directly to the people who need it. Last year, they returned once again to Daptone's studio/headquarters in Bushwick, Brooklyn (affectionately known by many as "The House of Soul") to write and record a new record. This time, the band brought in background vocalists the Dapettes (Saundra Williams and Starr Duncan), who have been touring with the band for over a year, to round out the sound and in a few weeks emerged with thirty tracks of what would be their strongest work to date with their Grammy Award nominated album, Give the People What They Want.

Tickets for Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings go on sale Today, Friday, June 12 at noon and may be purchased for $49 and $39 online at wellsfargocenterarts.org, by calling 707-546-3600, and in person at the box office at 50 Mark West Springs Road in Santa Rosa.

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