MANDRE - MANDRE

• mandre: mandre
      (2015, cd, ??, fever dream fd-cd-7507)

If I'm not mistaken, I mentioned this excellent re-release about two weeks ago.Spacy midnight funk, soul and disco. Includes the Zappa-written 'Dirty Love' and the Andre 'Mandre' Lewis / Johnny Guitar Watson collaboration 'Masked Marauder'.

Mandre was a group that Andre Lewis started in 1977 as a continuation of the gospel/soul group "Maxayn" which was named after the lead singer Maxayn Lewis, Andre's wife. While the Maxayn group had been playing gospel and soul with Maxayn Lewis on lead vocals, the Mandre group was Andre's project to add electronic elements and also shift the sound toward more spacey funk and disco. Andre also played keyboards for Frank Zappa, Buddy Miles, LaBelle, Earth Wind and Fire, Huey Lewis, Edwin Starr, Charles Wilson and the Gap Band, Sly Stone, Bobby Womack, Johnny Guitar Watson and a handful of others. He was also a tester of Roland products and was one of the first musicians to record with the infamous Roland TR-808 drum machine.