Happy Birthday Bernie Worrell: Colonel Claypool’s Bucket Of Bernie Brains At Bonnaroo 2002

Innovative keyboardist Bernie Worrell was born on this date 73 years ago. Worrell was a founding member of pioneering funk band Parliament-Funkadelic and both toured and recorded with Talking Heads between 1980 and their 1991 breakup. Bernie was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame with 15 other members of P-Funk in 1997 and was just the second recipient of a Moog synthesizer from creator Bob Moog. Sadly, Worrell succumbed to lung cancer on June 24, 2016.

Bernie Worrell was a fixture of the jam scene in the later years of his life as he played a number of jam-centric festivals and teamed with such artists as Steve Kimock, Les Claypool and members of The Meters in addition to fronting his own group called The Woo Warriors. The keyboardist was set to perform at the first installment of Bonnaroo in 2002 with guitarist Buckethead, Primus drummer Bryan “Brain” Mantia and bassist Bill Laswell as Praxis. Brain called upon his Primus band mate Les Claypool when Laswell was unable to play the set and Colonel Claypool’s Bucket Of Bernie Brains was born.

“These performances were unrehearsed and purely improvisational. Each show was completely unique unto itself,” Claypool told MTV in 2002 about the Bonnaroo set and a series of Bay Area club dates that followed. “We didn’t even know what key we were going to be in from moment to moment. We went in there and starting throwing pasta at the walls, and it turned out great.”

Colonel Claypool’s Bucket Of Bernie Brains, aka C2B3, went on to record and release a lone studio album, The Big Eyeball In The Sky, in 2004 and toured behind the LP that fall. Fan-shot video featuring nearly all of C2B3’s Bonnaroo debut surfaced on YouTube last year thanks to deadbuttdreaming:

[Part One]

[Part Two]