Don’t blink, because Corey Fonville and Sam Fribush are making moves at the speed of sound — the sound of the Hammond organ, to be exact.

“It’s really exciting,” says Fonville, the Richmond-based drummer known near and far as a founder of the Concord Jazz-signed hip-hop fusion band, Butcher Brown. “I’m like, ‘Man, is this all happening right now?’”

“The minute we start playing, it’s hilariously easy to make music,” says Fribush, the Greensboro, North Carolina-based keyboardist who has vaulted himself to the forefront of a revival of appreciation for the Hammond organ and the unique role it can play in various jazz combos.

Since linking up in June, the Fonville x Fribush partnership has dropped a digital-only EP featuring guitarist Charlie Hunter (“R&B Organ Trio”), nearly sold through two vinyl variants of a forthcoming long-player featuring guitarist Alan Good Parker (“What Day Is It”), played multiple sold-out shows in Richmond and earned the top spot on Tidal’s Best New Jazz playlist, all while establishing an uncommonly organic sonic and visual identity. Did I mention there’s a clothing partnership? We’ll get there. A lot has happened these last nine months.

“It’s just been very cosmic,” Fonville says. “Everything has just made too much sense, almost scary.”

A speedy start

The duo grew out of a seed planted by a shared mentor: Charlie Hunter, the hybrid bass-guitar virtuoso who is featured on the “R&B Organ Trio” EP, who contributed to D’Angelo’s “Voodoo” album and who, like Fribush, calls Greensboro home. Hunter had been spending more and more time in Richmond, then coming back and singing the praises of the creative community surrounding Butcher Brown. “He kept coming back to Greensboro being like, ‘Man, you got to hang out with these guys. Y’all are speaking the same language,’” Fribush remembers.

Butcher Brown is now four full-length albums into its relationship with Concord Jazz. The latest, “Letters from the Atlantic,” arrived less than a year ago, supported by plenty of national and international touring. “It’s not easy to want to venture off into a whole other project,” Fonville says. “I have Butcher Brown — I was one of the founding fathers of that. It’s not easy to be like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna start something new.’”

Yet Fonville realized his musical travels were missing something: a sound he’d appreciated since he was growing up in Virginia Beach with a father who posed for a childhood photo with Jimmy McGriff when the legendary organist performed in Norfolk in the early 1970s. The younger Fonville also has first-person memories of attending a mid-1990s musical festival at the age of seven and seeing Larry Goldings play the organ. “This is different,” he said to himself at the time. “I didn’t understand it yet, but I knew this was something special that resonated with me. It was so hip, but it was from yesterday.”

Fonville mentioned to Charlie Hunter that he was looking to link up with an organist. Hunter let Fribush know. Fribush texted Fonville and pitched making an organ trio record together. Fonville suggested bringing in Alan Good Parker, the recent Richmond-to-Los Angeles transplant who has shown his considerable chops both within and outside of the jazz context. Fonville also suggested tracking at Minimum Wage Recording not long before Lance Koehler moved the studio from Richmond to Staunton, Virginia.

Fribush drove up with his Hammond, and the trip proved productive. “We recorded over 30 tracks in two days,” Fribush reports. The first batch of those recordings will become available on Friday, Feb. 27 with the release of “What Day Is It” via Charlottesville-based label WarHen Records. The grooves are tight, yet the playing is refreshingly loose. If it sounds like music made in a no-hesitation, first-idea-best-idea environment, that’s because it was.

Fribush provided a cornucopia of instrumental sketches as compositional starting points — upwards of 100 ideas. Parker provided melodic embellishment. Fonville provided percussion and a brisk pace for the project as a whole. “Sam would play a thing,” Parker says, “and I would write some melodies, and we’d kind of sketch out a form, but the improvisation of the writing and recording was very alive.”

Though Parker was still working through his parts at the same time he was laying them down, Fonville kept the session moving forward. “I would have probably done a lot more takes, [but] I remember Corey being like, ‘Nah, man, I think that was good.’”

“There’s no reason to stay on something for too long if we don’t have it by take three,” Fonville confirms. “When you have musicians like Sam and Alan, it’s just easy. They’re high-caliber and sharp, so there wasn’t much time wasted.”

According to Fonville, there’s a philosophical connection between that pacing and the organ combo vibe: “I think we’ve gotten too serious at a certain point with improvised music. It’s like, ‘Let’s just have fun. Let’s just relax and go in there and play music…’ This kind of music isn’t supposed to be perfect, because it’s a lifestyle thing.”

The sound of dedication

The Hammond organ isn’t just an instrument. It’s an art form unto itself: a highly versatile and specialized assemblage of keys, drawbars, pedals and metal tonewheels amplified by a large speaker cabinet that can be a live sound engineer’s nightmare, if they’re not familiar with how to mic the horn — a spinning treble speaker that looks more like an air raid siren than a piece of musical equipment. Lugging one around is a commitment, to put it mildly.

“When we did the record, Lance had to take off the door in order to get the Hammond in the studio,” Fonville remembers. “That’s true dedication, man.”

Bringing one from place to place may not be fun, but nothing brings a party like the Hammond. Originally sold to churches as a budget alternative to pipe organs, the Hammond is pure magic when applied to jazz. A number of iconic keyboardists have made the organ their signature instrument, from icons like Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff and Booker T. Jones to more recent standard-bearers like John Medeski and Delvon Lamarr. “The organ was the breadwinner for Blue Note Records and most jazz labels in the 50s and 60s,” Fribush notes. “Those were the records that real people, blue-collar people, were buying off the street. Your grandfather, your dad — in his jazz collection, there’s organ records.”

As electric as the instrument can be in the studio setting, the Hammond truly comes alive when an audience is there to mirror the instrument’s expressiveness. The crowd tends to get a little rowdier. Impressive solos earn shouts in return, and staying in your seat is that much more difficult. “It’s got that warmth,” Fribush says. “It’s got that feeling to it that’s automatic. That’s the difference between going to hear a really swinging jazz quartet, versus a swinging organ trio. It’s like, ‘Oh, we’re drinking in here tonight.’”

“Instantly,” Fonville agrees. “Just give me a whiskey.”

Révéler Experiences is the place to go in Richmond to see this effect up close. The Carytown venue has hosted multiple Fonville x Fribush engagements. Last June, for example, the duo was joined by a characteristically animated Charlie Hunter, and the crowd was as responsive as any sit-down audience you’ll find. There wasn’t just applause at the end of solos: Outbursts of appreciation punctuated instrumental turns of phrase on a near-constant basis, such that the show felt like a high-energy back-and-forth in which neither participant could wait for the other to finish before jumping in.

By contrast, their most recent show there, in January, maintained a bubbling simmer. Hunter was in the mix once again, as was Fonville’s guitar-playing Butcher Brown bandmate Morgan Burrs. After a few instrumental tunes, the quartet provided backing for Richmond-based singer Ronnie Luxe, who reprised her performance of “Sparks” from the “R&B Organ Trio” EP, and who lent her cool, commanding voice to one of that album’s instrumental singles, a cover of Sade’s “I Couldn’t Love You More.” “She’s got the golden voice,” Fonville said that night between songs. “It’s like a hug.”

While backing up Luxe, Fribush showed off the Hammond’s range — the textural subtlety the organ’s many analog controls can produce. That flexibility is a big reason he was drawn to the Hammond. “I love the versatility of it,” he says, “the way it was used in gospel music, and being able to dictate the feel of the groove.”

If that sounds to you like something a drummer might say, you’re not far off. Fribush describes himself as a drummer at heart. “Really, the organ is just an extension of that,” he says. He grew up in a musical family trying his hand at a variety of instruments, from steel pan to banjo. In 2017, he graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music with a degree in contemporary improvisation then spent some time gigging in New Orleans before moving back to Greensboro during the pandemic.

Once there, he worked with Charlie Hunter on building up an organ trio repertoire while immersing himself in organist canon. “It’s been the last five years that I’ve dug into all the greats like Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Larry Young and some of the more modern guys, like Larry Goldings.” Fribush’s devotion is readily apparent to those who play with him.

“Sam is one of the few — and may be the one in my age bracket, in my 30s, and millennials — that are pushing this instrument, really about that life,” Fonville says.

“What impressed me about him is he’s so young, but he’s playing the language of older jazz,” Parker says. “When you play a medium, meat-and-potatoes swing thing in a classic organ-guitar trio format, you can tell he loves it… When I find people who are committed to the art form, it’s refreshing for me.”

Fribush’s catalog has grown impressively over the last handful of years via a number of different combos, including multiple releases alongside his mentor, Charlie Hunter, and a blisteringly funky 2025 album called “Another Side of the Sound” that features guitarist Ari Teitel of Dumpstaphunk and drummer Adam Deitch of Lettuce in the trio setting. Yet the chord he’s struck by partnering with Corey Fonville is resonating in a different way.

ACC territory

Part of that is the result of Fonville’s style of playing, which Butcher Brown fans know to be highly detailed and fluid, like a free-flowing conversation. “Corey has this amazing way of playing lyrically,” Fribush says, “so it’s almost like you have two vocalists, but we’re on these rhythm section instruments.”

Fribush also credits geography — the way that North Carolinians and Virginians share a musical vocabulary as regional neighbors. “The music feels very, very fresh, and we’re drawing from all our inspirations,” Fribush says. “All the stuff that we’re listening to is pretty modern, and I think that’s the unique approach that we’re bringing to this project, versus some other organ projects that you hear, which are very rooted in the funk and the boogaloo and the straight ahead swing… It comes from the ACC [Atlantic Coast Conference] region. Our roots with gospel music, folk music — it also just comes from being true improvisers. And I think it’s creating this amazing blend of sonic stuff.”

“This cat is cut from the same soil,” Fonville remembers thinking once Fribush began spending more time in the Butcher Brown orbit. The interplay on “What Day Is It” seems exceedingly natural. Preordained. Listen a few times and you might sense that songs like “Clean Sheets” and “Dinner Bell” always existed. Fribush has even filled in on keys for Butcher Brown, during a stretch of the group’s 2025 touring in which co-founder and keyboardist DJ Harrison had to stay close to home for health reasons.

The duo is closely knit — both figuratively and literally. On social media and onstage, you’ll often find the organist and drummer in matching vests or work shirts thanks to a partnership with the Greensboro-based, vintage-inspired clothing company, Hudson’s Hill — a visual manifestation of the Hammond organ’s workmanlike origins.

When it came time to decide which label would release “What Day Is It,” Fonville and Fribush found yet another opportunity to keep the regional vibe going by hitting up Warren Parker, founder of the Charlottesville-based label, WarHen Records. Releasing “What Day Is It” through a smaller label located in the ACC region is part of what Sam Fribush calls the duo’s “farm-to-table” approach.

This is Corey Fonville’s second go-round when it comes to partnering with WarHen, following Butcher Brown’s pre-pandemic tribute to Fela Kuti titled “Afrokuti.” Warren Parker was previously familiar with Fribush as well, as a result of the organist’s stint playing with folk-rock group Hiss Golden Messenger, which is led by a longtime friend of Parker’s, M.C. Taylor.

Parker helped book a Fonville x Fribush show at Dirty Nelly’s in Charlottesville and walked away impressed. He calls it “one of the most fun nights that I’ve had in Charlottesville in years,” and he immediately saw a through-line between the Fonville x Fribush partnership and one of his favorite bands, the recently reanimated organ trio, Medeski, Martin & Wood. “After the gig, I was flying really high on it. It resonated really deeply. And I just put it out there. I was like, ‘Listen, if you guys want to roll the dice with my little basement record label, I’m happy to do this with you,’” Parker remembers.

A farm-to-table product

WarHen is known for facilitating small runs of vinyl via project-based, handshake agreements with artists. The special Blue Chips variant — a nod to the album’s opening track — sold out quickly, and the standard black version is nearly gone as well. For Fonville, there’s a marriage of form and function when it comes to pressing an organ trio album to vinyl. “I’m excited about having a record — actual physical vinyl — because I know how important that is for this type of music,” Fonville says.

The all-in-the-family vibe extends to how the physical product came together. Liner notes were written by Phil Cook, a central figure in North Carolina’s music scene and fellow Hiss Golden Messenger alum who has an album of his own in WarHen’s catalog. (“Corey, Sam and Alan have each followed the path using their divine gifts to witness and surrender to the blessed universal funky vibration,” Cook wrote.) Parker ended up contributing his own self-taught artistic talents by designing the album’s coastal cover art, which was inspired by the minimalist look and feel of the ECM label.

WarHen has always been a side hustle for Parker; he describes it as a labor of love that has been seeming “a little bit more labor than love” of late. Working on “What Day Is It” was like a shot in the arm. “It reinvigorated my appreciation of running the label and gave me a boost when I needed it,” Parker says. “For that, I’m grateful.”

His words echo Fonville’s own sentiments about his sudden focus on organ-based music. “I’m grateful,” the drummer says. “It came at a great time in my life. It gives me more opportunities, musically, that I may not have in other spaces. It almost felt like this is what I was meant to do.”

“What Day Is It” will be released on Friday, Feb. 27. To hear and purchase the album, visit fonvillexfribush.bandcamp.com. To hear and purchase the “R&B Organ Trio” EP, visit samfribush.bandcamp.com.

Fonville x Fribush will perform with Charles Owens, Marcus Tenney and Morgan Burrs at Révéler on Saturday, March 7. The early show will start at 7 p.m. and the late show will start at 9:30 p.m. Admission is $30. For tickets, visit revelerexperiences.com.