Brian Culbertson takes his music in a new direction

Brian Culbertson figured he's done his part to help couples get it on. Now it's time to rewind the evening back to the party and get everybody up and dancing.

The keyboardist-trombonist has carved out a smooth-jazz niche since the mid-1990s with recordings such as "It's On Tonight," in which the "it" of the title was pretty clear.

"Very sensual -- but it was time to break out of that into something a little more high-energy, kind of like my shows have always been," Culbertson said.

To produce the CD he had in mind, the 35-year-old musician secured the services of Maurice White, an icon of the 1970s funk Culbertson grew up listening to. In fact, the cover of "Bringing Back the Funk," which GRP released in April, shows headset-wearing toddler Brian listening to White's "Earth, Wind & Fire," according to his father, who snapped the photo.

Fast-forward to early 2008: White's presence energized the CD's participants, Culbertson recalled.

"As soon as anyone went into the studio and saw him, they were starstruck -- it was like a private walking in and seeing the general," he recalled.

Culbertson was quick to explain the new album's title as having more to do with re-creating the studio vibe -- simultaneous music-making -- than bringing back music that in some sense has never gone away.

"For the first five days, we had eight or nine musicians in the same room feeding off each other," he said. "Egos were kind of thrown out the window: We remembered why we got into music in the first place. I just went in with basic ideas, not knowing what they would play."

On "Bringing Back the Funk," Bootsy Collins, Larry Graham, Greg Adams, Tony Maiden, Larry Dunn and others represent some of the classic bands of '70s funk. They're joined by such solo stars as Ronnie Laws, Gerald Albright and Paul Jackson Jr. and neosoul artists Ledisi and Musiq Soulchild.

Nourished while growing up in central Illinois by funk recordings -- his father, a school band director, was a genuine fan of the music -- Culbertson had to wait till his college years in Chicago for direct exposure. That's when he earned his stripes in Funkhouse, a band that "played every funk cover on the planet," plus Motown-style bands around the Windy City.

When Culbertson plays the Walker tonight, he'll front an 11-piece band for a "Bringing Back the Funk" show. The unusually large size for a touring group, he said, was made feasible by the sponsorship of AirTran Airways. There's no way, he said, that he could travel to 30 cities from April to September without that underwriting.