{"id":106733,"date":"2026-01-05T21:05:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T21:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/106733\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T21:05:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T21:05:20","slug":"oteil-friends-and-the-gentle-madness-of-new-years-eve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/106733\/","title":{"rendered":"Oteil & Friends and the Gentle Madness of New Year\u2019s Eve"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oteil & Friends | The Parker \u2014 Fort Lauderdale, FL | December 31, 2025 | photos by Russell Levine<\/p>\n

By the time the house lights dropped at The Parker<\/a>, 2025 was already staggering toward the exit, wounded and unwanted. The crowd felt it. Oteil Burbridge<\/a> felt it. This was not a night for champagne clich\u00e9s or forced celebration. This was a night for truth \u2014 preferably delivered at a reasonable volume.<\/p>\n

\"\"Oteil Burbridge<\/p>\n

Oteil stepped into the glow dressed not like a rock star but like a traveler returning from somewhere ancient, wrapped in a flowing Egyptian galabiya that turned the stage into something closer to a sanctuary than a venue. It wasn\u2019t a costume. It was context. Freshly back from Egypt, Oteil carried that journey with him \u2014 not as spectacle, but as feel. His bass lines moved like currents instead of riffs, circular and grounding, more about gravity than flash.<\/p>\n

\"\"Oteil Friends | Fort Lauderdale FL<\/p>\n

From the opening notes of My Sisters and Brothers (In Christ), Oteil made it clear he wasn\u2019t there to dominate the room \u2014 he was there to hold it together. His bass didn\u2019t shout; it guided. Thick, funky, elastic grooves wrapped around the band like scaffolding, giving everyone else permission to stretch, explore, and breathe. This was leadership by feel, not force.<\/p>\n

\"\"Lamar Williams Jr and Oteil Burbridge<\/p>\n

Love and War followed, a song co-written and sung by Lamar Williams Jr., and one of the night\u2019s emotional anchors. Oteil and Lamar locked in with the kind of familial ease that can\u2019t be rehearsed \u2014 a groove built on shared history and mutual trust. The rhythm didn\u2019t push forward so much as pull everyone inward, asking the crowd to listen instead of react.<\/p>\n

That restraint defined the night.<\/p>\n

\"\"Jason Crosby<\/p>\n

At the center of the sound stood Jason Crosby, whose restless musicianship moved fluidly between keyboards, vocals, and strings. His long journey \u2014 from Santana and Tedeschi Trucks to the extended Allman and Grateful Dead families \u2014 showed not in volume, but in intuition. Mason\u2019s Children arrived lean and dangerous, played with discipline instead of indulgence, reminding everyone that the Grateful Dead were never meant to be wallpaper.<\/p>\n

\"\"New Years Eve with Oteil and Friends in Florida<\/p>\n

Set two cracked the room open. Bertha shook loose stiff joints and stiff drinks, while Estimated Prophet slithered in behind it, sharpened by a sly Pink Floyd \u201cMoney\u201d mash-up. The familiar pulse crept beneath the rhythm like an intrusive thought about time, power, and the strange ways we measure value. Oteil\u2019s bass turned the moment from novelty into commentary \u2014 funky, elastic, and quietly ominous.<\/p>\n

\"\"Jason Crosby<\/p>\n

When Friend of the Devil emerged, Crosby picked up the violin, steering the song into unexpected territory. His fiddle lines added a Marshall Tucker Band\u2013style Southern looseness, turning the tune into something front-porch and back-road, less stadium Dead and more human confession. All the while, Oteil remained the compass \u2014 steady, patient, unshakeable.<\/p>\n

\"\"Happy New Year<\/p>\n

Behind him sat John Morgan Kimock, whose drumming favored feel over force, anchoring the music with quiet intelligence. As midnight approached, Lamar Williams Jr. returned to the microphone for Cats Under the Stars, followed later by a deeply felt Rubin and Cherise. These moments felt less like covers and more like conversations with the past.<\/p>\n

Then the clock cracked open.<\/p>\n

\"\"Oteil Burbridge<\/p>\n

Help on the Way \u2192 Slipknot! \u2192 Franklin\u2019s Tower wasn\u2019t chaos \u2014 it was controlled release. Oteil\u2019s bass carried the transition like a heartbeat, steady and insistent, guiding the room across the threshold. At midnight, there was no eruption. The crowd exhaled collectively, as if realizing it had been held upright the entire time.<\/p>\n

\"\"Jaden Lehman
\n\"\" Tom Guarna<\/p>\n

After the turn, In Memory of Elizabeth Reed arrived exactly as it should \u2014 instrumental, reverent, and unspoken. The Allman Brothers\u2019 spirit was present but not summoned, honored through melody rather than spectacle. Guitarists Tom Guarna and Jaden Lehman approached the tune from opposite ends of the generational spectrum, meeting in the middle with restraint and respect.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Parker | Fort Lauderdale FL<\/p>\n

The rhythmic foundation remained rock-solid thanks to Peter Lavezzoli, whose drumming blended R&B pocket, jazz curiosity, and decades of lived history into something that never once pulled focus \u2014 only deepened it.<\/p>\n

Scarlet Begonias and Fire on the Mountain followed, the fire choosing to smolder instead of exp<\/p>\n

\"\"Oteil Burbridge Friends | The Parker<\/p>\n

lode. And when the encore, Mighty High, finally arrived, it felt less like a finale and more like a gentle release back into the night.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t a New Year\u2019s Eve blowout. It was something better: a musical reality check, delivered by a band unafraid to trust silence, space, lineage \u2014 and groove.<\/p>\n

\"\"Oteil Burbridge | December 31st 2025<\/p>\n

Fresh from Egypt, dressed like a pilgrim, and playing like a healer, Oteil Burbridge didn\u2019t just lead the band.
He held the room together, one deep, funky, ancient bass line at a time, while the calendar flipped.<\/p>\n

And sometimes, that\u2019s the real miracle.<\/p>\n

\"\"Setlist from New Years Eve with Oteil and friends in Fort Lauderdale<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oteil & Friends | The Parker \u2014 Fort Lauderdale, FL | December 31, 2025 | photos by Russell…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":{"0":"post-106733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-lauderdale","8":"tag-fort-lauderdale","9":"tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","10":"tag-fort-lauderdale-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}