One of the most renowned artists and in-demand producers, collaborators, and session players making music today, Thundercat has been on the scene for over 25 years, despite barely being in his 40s. Raised in Los Angeles in a musical household, Stephen Lee Bruner is the son of Ronald Bruner Sr., an accomplished drummer who played with the likes of The Temptations, The Supremes, Diana Ross, and Gladys Knight. After achieving some minor recognition in his teens with group No Curfew, Stephen joined his brother, Ronald Jr., in legendary crossover thrash punks Suicidal Tendencies, a band he’d remain a part of for nearly a decade, while simultaneously branching out in jazz collectives The Young Jazz Giants and West Coast Get Down, which more resemble the music he’s best known for today.
After spending the 2000s juggling his various groups and session work with some big names like Erykah Badu and Flying Lotus, Bruner, at the encouragement of Lotus, began focusing more on singing and crafting solo material, forging his persona as Thundercat (an homage to the popular ’80s cartoon) and dropping critically acclaimed jazz fusion, electronic, and R&B-influenced debut LP The Golden Age of Apocalypse in 2011. By 2013 follow-up Apocalypse, Thundercat had become an even more sought-after collaborator for big-name contemporary artists, working with everyone from Snoop Dogg to the late Mac Miller, but it was his work on Kendrick Lamar’s masterful, Grammy-winning 2015 effort To Pimp a Butterfly that brought Bruner a new wave of mainstream attention.
Funky, psychedelic, playful, and genre-bending 2017 third album Drunk further drew new audiences, breaking into the mainstream thanks to viral tracks like “Them Changes” (which remains popular on TikTok almost a decade later) and Kendrick Lamar feature “Walk on By,” landing on countless year-end lists and earning the best reviews of his career to that point. In the following years, Bruner cemented his reputation as one of the most important figures in modern jazz fusion, continuing to collab with artists like Gorillaz, Janelle Monáe, Anderson .Paak, and Childish Gambino, releasing a well-received and Grammy-winning fourth album, It Is What It Is, in 2020, and even branching into acting with an appearance on Star Wars show The Book of Boba Fett.
More recently, Thundercat has collabed with artists like Tame Impala, Remi Wolf, and even Spinal Tap, continued to tour and make buzzworthy festival appearances, and, earlier this year, finally returned with his long-awaited fifth album, Distracted, an introspective, thoughtful, and sonically adventurous evolution of his signature sound, featuring guest appearances from Tame Impala, Lil Yachty, ASAP Rocky, Channel Tres, Beck, Haley Joel Osment, Domi and JD Beck, and Willow, and even a posthumous feature from the late Mac Miller. In support of that great new LP, the eclectic artist is currently on the Distracted AF Tour, which brings him back to Nashville for the first time in several years tonight, Oct. 31 at Marathon Music Works with a DJ set from Channel Tres! Tickets are still available right here while they last, and while there’s plenty of cool stuff competiting for your attention around town tonight for Halloween, this is sure to be one of the best concerts you’ll see all year!
Thundercat and Channel Tres perform tonight, Oct. 31 at Marathon Music Works. The show is all ages, begins at 8 p.m. (doors at 7 p.m.), and tickets are available for $62.08.
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