Andy Frasco and the U.N. makes Lincoln tour stop

By Karynn Brown
April 18, 2018

Andy Frasco and the U.N. will play the Zoo Bar this Thursday, April 19th, alongside Emily Bass and the Near Miracle.

Frasco and his eight-piece band have been playing a tour of feel-good blues music since 2007.

Averaging 250 shows a year for the last decade, the band has toured through 40 states and eight different countries recently.

“Playing every night, it’s the only way to make a living as a musician.” said Frasco in a phone interview.

Andy Frasco and the U.N.’s packed tour schedule has created a reputation that precedes their sound in many places. Known for electrically energetic performances, frequent stage dives and a mission to make everyone dance, the group has taken their live performances to a new height.

This tour brought the group through China, Germany, Switzerland and Thailand. Before the month is out, the band will have played Nebraska, Illinois, the Netherlands, Colorado and Arkansas. Clearly no country, venue, or crowd is too big or too small for Andy Frasco.

Andy Frasco and the U.N. have played the Bourbon Theater in 2017, and Omaha’s Hullabaloo Festival last summer. His Nebraska connections began with longtime friend Kris Lager. Lager, an Omaha native, helped Frasco write his fourth album, “Half a Man” which was released in 2014. The two toured together for a while following the album’s release.

“It’s like I’m the drunk uncle and he’s the Buddhist-Irish-Rastafarian.” said Frasco about their partnership.

Both Lager and Frasco build their music from similar foundations of feel good funk. Emphasizing skillful, full-bodied rises and falls and a steady blues driven tempo. Frasco’s work relies on a style of sound that mixes blues, folk and soul. The eight-member band includes piano, guitar, saxophone, bass, tuba, trumpet, trombone and sousaphone. This massive orchestral group gives the band leeway into a modernization of soul and blues classics.

This famed big-band feel has lent itself perfectly to the energy of a live Frasco show. Band members are known for their sudden and improvisational show-off ‘fights’.

A true patron of the on-the-road lifestyle, Frasco wouldn’t have his career any other way. His road-life experience has given way to a blog series entitled “Afromanofesto.” A collection of 21 of Frasco’s most important life lessons from the road, the Afromanofesto appears in a poster, blog posts and podcast format.

The Afromanofesto ranges from the simple #8, “Fast Food. Don’t do it unless it’s a 4am emergencies.”, to the deeper and more complex lessons, like #15, “Disappointment will make you stronger.”

These lessons have developed into “Andy Frasco’s World Saving Podcast.” The hour-long podcast released its fourth episode this week, which stars Keller Williams as a guest.

Alongside the Afromanofesto, one of Frasco’s culminating projects has been the release of “Songs From the Road,” a 2017 CD/DVD project which chronicles a block party in Bamberg, Germany which was attended by 15,000 people. The live album, which has always been a goal of Frasco’s, came from a three-hour long set of the entire Andy Frasco and the U.N.’s catalog.