Menahan Street Band is a Brooklyn instrumental funk outfit formed in 2006 around Thomas Brenneck, with members shared across the Dap-Kings and Charles Bradley's Extraordinaires. Jay-Z sampled Make the Road by Walking on Roc Boys — start with the 2008 album of the same name. Browse Menahan Street Band vinyl, CDs, and reissues at Wax Trax Records.
Menahan Street Band formed in Brooklyn, New York in 2006 around Thomas Brenneck. The band is named after Menahan Street in Brooklyn (where the band rehearsed in Brenneck's apartment). The membership is overlapping with the broader Daptone Records and Dunham Records family - multiple members are also in the Dap-Kings (Sharon Jones's backing band), Charles Bradley's Extraordinaires, the Budos Band, and other affiliated acts. Their 2007 single Make the Road by Walking became sampled (Jay-Z's Roc Boys on American Gangster, 2007), bringing the band new attention. They have continued releasing material across multiple decades alongside extensive backing work for vocalists across the broader Daptone family.
Menahan Street Band's sound combines instrumental, funk, soul jazz, deep funk, soul, and Afrobeat with extensive horn arrangements, vintage analog instrumentation and recording approaches, and arrangements drawing on classic 1960s and 1970s soul, funk, and Afrobeat traditions. Their work is foundational to the contemporary Daptone soul revival movement.
Daptone Records and Dunham Records pressings of the Menahan Street Band catalog are widely collected in soul and funk collecting communities. Multiple color variants and limited editions have been released.
Listeners new to Menahan Street Band typically start with Make the Road by Walking (2008) or The Exciting Sounds of Menahan Street Band (2021).
