Evening With Kiefer

One of LA’s best kept musical secrets, Kiefer has been described as a musician who doesn’t play keys with his fingers, but with his soul, which just about sums up in as simple terms as possible the artistry of this truly gifted individual who has re-defined that happy place between jazz improvisation and hip-hop beat-making. His distinctive musical style, which he calls ‘Over The Breaks,’ reaches new heights of

creativity on Memory Bomb, his solo debut for Blue Note Records.

Raised in San Diego, Kiefer Shackelford’s upbringing consisted of parents who were both aerospace engineers and keen pianists who both influenced him in their own way. His mother taught him at a very young age how to read music and play piano including simple Bach minuets. His father was a big lover of jazz, and Blue Note in particular, whose records included the hard bop of Sonny Clark and the soul jazz of Gene Harris. Kiefer would endlessly listen to Kind Of Blue, and after reading Miles Davis’s biography at 13, he knew he wanted to become a jazz musician. All during high school he studied jazz piano with a local teacher and went on to attend UCLA where Blue Note legend guitarist Kenny Burrell, who was head of the jazz program, became one of his tutors all through his college career.

After college Kiefer got signed to Stones Throw Records where he began to establish his musical identity and gain notice with a series of releases including Happysad, Between Days, and It’s Ok, B U. His musical resume now includes collabs with Dr. Dre, De La Soul, Pete Rock, Anderson .Paak, Kaytranada, Terrace

Martin, and many others.

Back in 2021 he’d heard that the legendary Don Was, President of Blue Note Records, was taking an interest his work and when time came to look for new partnerships to help him communicate his art to an appreciative audience and he realized that Blue Note would be a great place to do just that. He regards being signed to Blue Note as an “awesome gift” and a huge honor as well as a sentimental full circle moment after having grown up listening to Blue Note. The new collective project FATHERS—with Kiefer, bassist CARRTOONS, drummer Nate Smith, and producer Kenneth Blume—was the first full-length album on the label to feature the keyboardist.

Kiefer is a great believer in embracing new influences and new styles by way of collaboration with others and that’s where the journey to his first Blue Note leader album starts. His first priority was to get his two best friends—CARRTOONS and Shibo—to co-produce the album with him as they completely understood his sound, his harmony and were both extremely adept at drum programming. This mindset

of innovation through collaboration extended to the inclusion of a whole host of vocalists, rappers and stellar musicians to produce interesting combinations leading to something new and exciting that still sounded like a Kiefer thing.

The album title ‘Memory Bomb’ is the poetic way of saying ‘A Dream.’ For Kiefer, there are three types, the sort you experience when you sleep, the wishful longing type, and the ambitious type - and those themes populate the direction of some, if not all, of the songs on this album. There’s a real lyrical feel to Memory Bomb as it tells a story, and thanks to its improvisational moments, one that changes every

time you listen to it. It’s wistful, poetic, and groove driven all connected by that central feeling of being in a dreamscape of Kiefer’s making.

He describes the creative process for this LP as being driven by the need to find a creative space between jazz and hip-hop and the starting point involved the inclusion of acclaimed drummer Nate Smith, who lays it down on the smacking “Overture.” Kiefer says Smith “can play hip-hop, sound like he’s playing for Steely Dan, or for Betty Carter, or odd meters for Dave Holland, funk for Vulfpeck - he can do all these things and sound signature in all of them.”

He expresses the same level of admiration for the other contributors across the album: rappers Tony Stone and Erick the Architect who trade verses on “NewLevels NewDevils”; hip-hop trio Planet Giza who light up the groove-laden “BusyForYa”; saxophonist Walter Smith III and guitarist Flanafi who create the

evocative textures of the wistful title track “Memory Bomb.” The album also features contributions from the likes of Cisco Swank, Luke Titus, Relyae, Rae Khalil, Moonchild’s Amber Navran, Phil Beaudreau, Gareth Donkin, and Omari Jazz.

Kiefer describes most of the people on the LP as his LA ‘hangouts,’ some old, some new, but he makes special mention of Shibo, a beat maker he met at UCLA who introduced Kiefer to the world of Flying Lotus, Thundercat, Low End Theory, and others which had a profound influence on his creative path. Over the past several years the constellation of talents heard across Memory Bomb have thrived in that

space that Kiefer describes as ‘Over The Breaks,’ a term derived from a J Dilla track which for Kiefer means any artist who continues to push those boundaries.

Kiefer • Memory Bomb • Release Date: September 25, 2026