| Jazz |
In the fast-moving cycle of new releases, it is tempting to skim the surface, to treat each album as a fleeting event in the flood of digital content. Yet some projects insist on a deeper listen, demanding time not only for their grooves but for the histories and friendships that shaped them. Pretty Solid, the latest album from Kombo, is such a work: an outwardly playful, groove-driven record that, beneath its polished surface, carries decades of experience, layers of American musical tradition, and echoes of eras when music was less about algorithms and more about communion.
At first spin, Pretty Solid feels deceptively light, a soundtrack of conviviality, a breezy invitation that could pass for the theme of a television variety show. But those textures are misleading. Listen more closely and a different world emerges, one where the rhythmic DNA of funk, the improvisational freedom of jazz, and the warmth of soul intersect. There are shades of the seventies throughout, the era of Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters, or George Benson’s crossover triumphs, but refracted through a 21st-century lens, updated in production and intent.
“Groove and harmony can do more than entertain,” organist Ron Pedley reflects. “They can lift you up, calm you down, even transport you.” His hope, he adds, is that Kombo’s music “offers people peace, joy, and a shared emotional space. Unity in its own way.”
That aspiration situates the duo’s work in a tradition that stretches back to the counterculture’s utopian visions of “Peace and Love,” when music was understood as a communal force rather than a commodity. It is not hard to imagine Pedley and guitarist John Pondel stepping onto the stage at Woodstock, tucked somewhere between Santana’s fiery set and Joe Cocker’s soulful catharsis.
This is, in many respects, Kombo’s paradox: they are veterans of the studio and the touring circuit, yet their music retains the urgency and idealism of discovery. Pedley, a virtuoso of the Hammond B3, and Pondel, a guitarist with both technical agility and lyrical instinct, first crossed paths in 1984 during a Barry Manilow rehearsal, not the origin story most would expect for a jazz duo. Their individual résumés read like a survey of late-20th-century popular music: they’ve played behind Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Air Supply, Gerald Wilson, Maynard Ferguson, Paul Anka, Al Jarreau. To borrow a phrase from jazz history, these are “musician’s musicians”, players whose fingerprints can be found across a staggering range of performances, yet who rarely stepped into the spotlight together.
When they did, in 1999, it was at the suggestion of Grammy-nominated drummer and producer Bud Harner, who proposed the then-novel idea of a contemporary jazz duo centered on organ and guitar. In retrospect, that pairing seems inevitable: the Hammond B3, with its church-born gravitas and funk-club grit, and the guitar, that endlessly versatile chameleon of American music. From Grant Green to John Scofield, from Jimmy Smith’s classic organ trios to modern jam-band experiments, the combination has always been fertile ground. Kombo, however, brought a contemporary sensibility, the polish of players fluent in pop and R&B, the elasticity of jazz improvisers, the groove-consciousness of funk.
Pretty Solid arrives as the follow-up to 2023’s This Is the Good One, a record that placed two singles in the Top 5 and established Kombo as more than a studio side project. The new album is both a continuation and a progression. “We wanted to make something fun, confident, rhythmically alive,” Pedley says. “I think we’ve learned to shape melody more carefully and let the music breathe.” That intent is audible from the opening track, “Bussin,” which struts forward with a syncopated funk groove and crisp rhythmic interplay. This isn’t background music; it’s a statement of purpose.
What elevates Pretty Solid is its balance between accessibility and depth. Casual listeners can sink into its danceable grooves, but for students of music, the record is a field guide. Pedley’s organ lines are masterclasses in voice-leading and harmonic layering, his touch channeling Jimmy Smith while never lapsing into imitation. Pondel’s guitar work moves fluidly between rhythmic comping and melodic improvisation, recalling players as different as George Benson, Nile Rodgers, and Lee Ritenour. The rhythm sections, polished to a gleam, ground the music without smoothing out its edges.
Pedley traces his awakening to jazz back to a single recording: Jimmy Smith’s The Sermon. “It was the first time I heard jazz,” he recalls. “It opened my ears to improvisation and the idea that you don’t always have to play what’s written.” Pondel’s epiphany came through a different portal: the day his older brother bought an FM radio. “Suddenly we were hearing jazz, R&B, and rock that never showed up on AM radio. That was the day I knew: I couldn’t be happy doing anything else.”
Those sparks of youthful discovery still illuminate Kombo’s sound. Their music carries the restless curiosity of musicians who absorbed the broad palette of postwar American music,jazz, R&B, pop, classical, and fused it into a hybrid identity. “That’s the essence, the DNA of who we are,” Pedley insists. “It’s what makes Kombo sound like Kombo.”
Placed in today’s cultural landscape, Kombo’s project resonates in unexpected ways. In an era where jazz often splits into academic seriousness on one hand and commercial smoothness on the other, Pretty Solid stakes out a middle ground: intelligent but inviting, technically sharp but emotionally open. It nods to the past without nostalgia, instead suggesting continuity, the idea that groove and melody still matter, that joy can be as profound as virtuosity.
In that sense, Kombo’s work recalls not only their jazz contemporaries but also the broader ethos of musicians who have blurred genre boundaries for decades. Think of Stevie Wonder making funk a vehicle for social commentary, or Steely Dan turning pop sophistication into a laboratory of jazz harmonies, or Snarky Puppy today crafting global fusion rooted in groove. Kombo belongs in that lineage: musicians who speak fluently across traditions, who remind us that music’s first responsibility is to connect.
One could listen to Pedley and Pondel reminisce for hours and come away with a living history of 20th-century American music. But for now, their album offers something both simpler and more profound: an invitation. Put it on, lean in, and you’ll find yourself tapping into the very thing they have spent four decades cultivating together. As its title insists, this is music that is, in every sense of the word: Pretty Solid.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, September 16th 2025
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To buy this album: Here or Here
Musicians:
Kombo:
Ron Pedley : Hammond B3, MiniMoog
John Pondel : Electric & acoustic guitar
With:
Matt Bissonette: Electric & acoustic bass
Bud Harner: Cymbal swellss & bells
David Razenblat: Percussions
Vocals on Hypoteticals: Sharon «Muffy» Hendrix and Joe
Track Listing:
Bussin’
Action D
Shadow Mountain
Pretty Solid
Northern Night
Hypotheticals
On Gray’s Lake
Thick Heat
Stranger (No Longer)
Lavender Dreams