Average White Band’s Final Performance To Be Made Into Concert Film

EXCLUSIVE: The upcoming final performance of funk and R&B group Average White Band (AWB) is to be made into a concert film.

Anthony Baxter (Flint) will direct Final Note: The Last Dance of Average White Band, chronicling the band’s farewell show.

The Scottish band has scored multiple Grammy nominations and is known for track Pick Up The Pieces and albums AWB and Cut The Cake. They been sampled by artists and groups including Nas, Public Enemy, Snoop Dog and A Tribe Called Quest.

Earlier this year, the current lineup of AWB embarked on a farewell tour, playing venues including London’s Royal Albert Hall and concerts in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The band’s final concert will take place at the concert auditorium of St Louis’ only HBCU, Harris-Stowe State University, on Friday 13 December 2024. AWB first played in St Louis in 1977, at the city’s historic Kiel Auditorium, just a few weeks before they would share a bill with Marvin Gaye at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

Director Baxter, who is also working on Soul Searching, a feature-length documentary chronicling AWB’s influence on funk, soul, and hip-hop, said: “In a way, Soul Searching leads us naturally to this pivotal final performance, after half a century on the road for Average White Band’s two remaining founder members, Alan Gorrie and Onnie McIntyre. And so, with Final Note, we’re aiming to celebrate not only AWB’s legendary live sound, but the profound way it brings people together across boundaries of race, geography, and time. This is a case of history in the making, captured cinematically in St Louis”.

Both documentaries are due to be released in 2025, the 50th anniversary of AWB’s first chart-topping album and single in the United States.

Beginning In the 1970s, AWB became an influential act in funk and soul, admired by the likes of Marvin Gaye, James Brown and Ben E King, and topping both the Hot 100 and R&B charts. When the band became one of the first white groups to appear on Soul Train, host Don Cornelius explained to the audience: “It’s something that has to be seen to be believed. They play and sing like they were raised on cornbread and black-eyed peas.”

The band in fact, grew up in working class Scotland. Signed to Aretha Franklin’s label, Atlantic Records, they chalked up a string of hit records and Grammy nominations with tracks including Pick Up the Pieces, Schoolboy Crush, and Let’s Go Round Again, inspiring fans such as a young Barack Obama, Questlove and Luther Vandross.

The current lineup of Average White Band (AWB) includes original founding members Alan Gorrie (bass, lead vocals) and Onnie McIntyre (guitar, vocals), as well as Fred Vigdor (tenor saxophone and keyboards), Rob Aries (keyboards and bass, Cliff Lyons (alto saxophone and keyboards), Brent Carter (vocals) and Rocky Bryant (drums).