Zo! & Tall Black Guy – 2023 Abstractions Tour

Pick out your city.
Connect with your people.
Buy those tickets.
Come rock with ya folks!

Feb 17 in Philadelphia, PA (City Winery) • Feb 18 in Atlanta, GA (City Winery)Apr 18 in Oakland, CA (Yoshi’s) • May 7 in Escondido, CA (California Center for the Arts) • May 21 in Washington, D.C. (Pearl Street Warehouse) • Jun 17 in Baltimore, MD (AFRAM Festival) • Jul 03 in St. Louis (City Winery) • Jul 04 in Chicago, IL (City Winery) • Jul 08 in Detroit, MI (El Club) • Aug 26 in Waterbury, CT (SOUFEST Festival)

Tour Dates

Zo! Tour Dates

FourFront Release Shows

Sunday, April 26, 2020 – NASHVILLE, TN
Zo! + Carmen Rodgers
with Such
City Winery
609 Lafayette St, Nashville, TN 37203
Doors: 6p | Show: 8p
POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19

FourFront Listening Parties

**These Are Not Performances**

Friday, March 20, 2020 – CINCINNATI, OH
FourFront Listening Party + Meet & Greet/Q&A with Zo!
Artsville Theater
5021 Whetsel Ave, Cincinnati, OH 45227
7-11p
POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19

Past Listening Parties for FourFront:
Atlanta, GA, Baltimore, MD, Brooklyn, NY, Chicago, IL, Detroit, MI, Jacksonville, FL, Miami, FL, Philadelphia, PA, Pittsburgh, PA, Richmond, VA, St. Louis, MO, Toronto, ON, Washington D.C.

For booking inquiries, please Contact:
Booking Agent || The Empire Agency
Zack Johnson || zack@empireagency.com

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Zo! + Carmen Rodgers “Piano & A Microphone” Dates

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Zo! on Piano. Carmen on vocals. Intimate venues. Playing jams.

Friday, April 10, 2020 – RICHMOND, VA
Zo! + Carmen Rodgers
Southern Kitchen
541 N 2nd St, Richmond, VA 23219
POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19

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Zo! MasterClass Workshops

TBA

Visuals from the Zo! featuring Carmen Rodgers | New Year’s Eve at Hayti Heritage in Durham, NC – (12.31.14)

Visuals from…

Zo!
featuring Carmen Rodgers
at Hayti Heritage in Durham, NC
December 31, 2014

Personnel:
Zo! – Keys & Shit Talking
Carmen Rodgers – Lead Saingin’
Phonte – Special Guest Saingin’ & NYE Toast
Tom Browne – Guest Trumpet & Rap on “Funkin’ For Jamaica”
Zach Cutler – Electric Six-String
Darion Alexander – The Low End Theory
LaDarrel “Saxappeal” Johnson – Take a guess…
Jon Laine – The Kit

Photos courtesy of Artige Photography, The Art of Cool Project and Cathy Foreman

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The ManMade Tour hits Durham for New Year’s Eve!!

NYE 2014 Flyer

ManMade Tour returns to Durham, NC for NYE!

Zo!
featuring Carmen Rodgers
with
Surprise Special Guests

Wednesday, December 31, 2014 – Durham, NC
(ManMade Tour)

Hayti Heritage
804 Old Fayetteville St, Durham, NC 27701 | (919) 683-1709
BUY TICKETS

On Stage With The Foreign Exchange @ The Art Of Cool Festival – Durham, NC (04.26.14)

It went down this past Saturday with The Foreign Exchange at the Hayti Heritage Center (Durham, NC) at The Art Of Cool Festival… Here are a couple of shots from it.

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Photo by @FVaral

(L to R)
Jeanne Jolly – Vocals
Zo! – Keyboards
Carmen Rodgers – Vocals
Darion Alexander – Bass
Phonte – Lead Vocals
Nick Baglio – Drums
Chris Boerner – Guitar
Nicolay – Keyboards

Pics from Durham, NC Show – 07.25.13 …Photos by Meri Hyöky Photography

Shouts to Meri Hyöky Photography for these pics from Thursday’s show at Casbah in Durham, NC. We had a BALL.

Personnel included: Myself on keys, Deborah Bond on vocals, Zach Cutler on guitar, Jon Laine on drums, Dennis Turner on bass, Phonte on vocals, and Jeanne Jolly on vocals.

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Zo! Interview in Indy Week (Raleigh-Durham, NC) (July 25, 2013)

Interview: Zo! talks new album ManMade, DIY R&B and happy accidents

Author: Brandon Soderberg
Source: Indy Week

Lorenzo Ferguson, or Zo!, as he’s known to fans, released his new album ManMade — a rakish collection of house and ghettotech-tinged slow jams — back in May. It’s another idiosyncratic and uncompromising release from Foreign Exchange Music, fueled by intense collaborations between Zo! and the Foreign Exchange’sPhonte Coleman (credited as writer and producer). The second single, “Count to Five” featuring Gwen Bunn and Phonte, is propulsive soul-pop about real-life concerns like anxiety and transition. And don’t miss the charming video, which pays homage to the ’70s era of Sesame Street when the kid’s show was almost activist in its embrace of multiculturalism and positive vibes. We spoke over the phone about the new album, being doggedly independent while the music industry crumbles, “jheri curl music,” and even afforded some music nerd trivia about ’80s softies Mr. Mister. Zo! is celebrating the release of ManMade at the Casbah in Durham tonight along with the exploratory jazz trio the Hot at Nights.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

Studio Campfire Stories: ‘ManMade’ Edition – “Tell Me Something New” (feat. Jeanne Jolly)

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In December 2012, I was sitting fairly comfortably with the album….. But the perfectionist in me still felt a bit uneasy. To me, the album as whole was cool… but I needed at LEAST two more joints to make it RIGHT. Not too long after making this declaration to Phonte in a phone conversation one day, I had a drum pattern enter my head seemingly out of nowhere… and the time signature was in 7/4. Hmm, interesting… But I was proud to realize that the patterns and compositions that were starting to pop up in my head weren’t always tied to a 4/4 count (see: “Count To Five“). Creative expansion and growth in that studio is one of the greatest feelings in the world. Another great feeling is recording a drum pattern and having it sound EXACTLY the way it did when you ran it a million times over in your head – accents, fills and ALL. I can remember playing just the recorded drums over and over for about a half hour before I even put my hands on the keyboard to figure in a chord progression. The open hi-hat that I played in the pattern gave it a “smoky” feel to me and the colors I saw for the music were various shades of blue… So, I had the setting and atmosphere already, all that was left was to sit down at the keyboard and play with a progression that matched not only what I was feeling, but also visualizing. I can remember messing around on the keys for about five or ten minutes and coming up with this progression where the bassline seemed to ‘walk up’ the board to accompany the chords being played (this part ended up becoming the intro and hook). Once I demoed it and got an idea of what direction it was going in, that’s when I began re-recording all of the parts separately. The keys were recorded first followed by the bassline. I EQ’d the bass guitar and adjusted the tone on the preamp so that if you listen closely on a few parts in the song, you can actually hear my fingertips on the bass strings… That’s EXACTLY how I wanted it to come through. Maintain the beauty of the music itself, but still keep some of it raw as hell. Hearing fingertips plucking bass strings is always reminiscent of funk players like Bootsy and Larry Graham playing… To hear that on a ‘pretty’ record was just the contrast and texture that I wanted for the song.

Once I added the changes, completed the instrumental, and titled it “Seven Eight Enough”… I hit Phonte with a typical, “Check that gmail” …or a more exaggerated “G muhfuckin MAIL” text, because I KNEW we had something crazy on our hands. He called me back within about 20 minutes and when I picked up, he quoted the great Negro Poet and Philosopher…………………….. Gucci Mane

Phonte: “mmYAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!” 

Me: “IssssssGuuuuuuuucci!!!!!!”

*Heavy Laughter*

Me: “Looks like I just need ONE more joint now!”

And guess who happened to be in the studio with Phonte when I sent the instrumental over to him? …None other than the one and only, Jeanne “If you don’t want the executive producer….. ALL IN THE VIDEOS… DANCIN’… COME TO DEATH ROW” Jolly!!! The two of them were already recording for something unrelated to the album. Before this joint was sent, we were talking about putting Jeanne on the instrumental for what ended up becoming “New In Town (Happy)” (the instrumental was actually titled “Lifaudit”) BUT!!!!….. Since Jeanne was already there, a song was written for her to the brand new music. I mean, why not? …The excitement was completely there and dammit, so was the vocalist. And to be honest, this was one of the greatest examples of “right place in the right time” I have ever witnessed because Jeanne got in that studio and CLOWNED on this track. Phonte sent that joint back to me a couple days later with her vocals and what bugged me out the most was how the tone of her voice MATCHED those same colors I saw a couple days earlier when I ran the drums over and over again. It was like I made the song specifically for her without knowing it in advance. To this day we refer to this joint as her “one hitta quitta” track… She simply came in, took no prisoners for about three and a half minutes …then rolled the hell out. The dope part about it was that she really loved the results. The next time I saw her was at soundcheck for our New Year’s show in Durham with The Foreign Exchange and she was raving about the song, “I looooove the new song! Phonte really wrote some beautiful stuff for it!!” Truth. I am happy with the fact that the song allowed her to show off that vocal ability…

“…This…. is…. my… heeeeeaaaaaarrrr-eraaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrt!!!” *fades out*

I’ve heard this song literally over 300 times and that part STILL gives me goosebumps… Very well done, Jeanne.

Purchase ManMade HERE • Or on iTunes