Kendall Street Company Releases Dave Schools-Produced ‘Space Is The Place’ Cover

Kendall Street Company shared a new single, a cover of Sun Ra’s “Space Is The Place.” The Virginia-based band teamed up with Widespread Panic bassist Dave Schools to produce the track.

Sun Ra’s “Space Is The Place” previously existed in Kendall Street Company’s live repertoire and the new Schools-produced studio recording sees the band continuing to honor their ancestors so to speak.

Sun Ra heavily influenced one of the fathers of the modern jam scene, Col. Bruce Hampton. Hampton in-turn was a mentor figure for Dave Schools’ band Widespread Panic. Kendall Street Company are among the next-gen of jam and their cover of Sun Ra’s “Space is The Place” completes the cosmic circle.

“KSC surprised me in a number of ways beyond their obvious individual skills as players,” Schools said of the band’s Sun Ra cover. “Their unity and team spirit come to mind. It was a very high level of ‘all for one’ band thinking. The idea of covering a Sun Ra tune à la Aquarium Rescue Unit is no easy task and KSC pulled it off admirably with energy and, as Col Bruce would have demanded, a stunning lack of ego.”

Kendall Street Company guitarist Ben Laderberg further detailed how the band came to cover and record “Space Is The Place”:

“I had watched the original 1974 sci-fi musical film Space is the Place in some of my hazier college years circa 2013, but I didn’t get exposed to the song in a live context until the summer of 2016 at the Fox Theater in Boulder, CO. Colonel Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit had played until like two minutes before the strict noise curfew but they still wanted to do an encore. The band came out sans instruments and performed an a cappella ‘Space is the Place’ and that is when the gears in my brain started ticking. Step by step the lore of the song became a mantra. I later came out to find that this abstract cosmic musical absurdity had a name: ‘Zambiism.’ On a tour in Colorado, Louis Dabbelt and I watched a bunch of videos of ARU playing the song and transcribed the Colonel’s improvised planetary wordplay, which we used as stepping stone for our form. Jake Vanaman suggested a key change later in the song, which made the song even more evil. Long live Zambi.”

Listen to Kendall Street Company’s cover of “Space Is The Place” below: