Ripe started making music “sweating to hell in a basement underneath a Subway sandwich shop,” and they have not lost that sweat since. The Boston-based quintet has spent fifteen years building a live reputation on funk, R&B, and a horn-driven groove that doesn’t ask to be taken lightly. This December, they bring it to Buffalo Iron Works for one of the final stops on a North American run that’s moved from Phoenix through the West Coast, Midwest, and Great Lakes.
About the Show
Ripe formed in 2011 at Berklee College of Music, where vocalist Robbie Wulfsohn, guitarist Jon Becker, drummer Sampson Hellerman, trombonist Calvin Barthel, and bassist Nadav Shapira built something that was as much community as band. Their own framing: “collaboration and community, a friendship that has become a bond as strong as family.” The early years bore that out: selling tickets by hand outside a coffee shop where friends worked, playing local bars, grinding for every room. It paid off. A 2014 performance video surfaced on Reddit’s r/listentothis and logged approximately 250,000 plays in 48 hours. Festival stages at Bonnaroo, Firefly, and Electric Forest followed, along with sold-out nights at House of Blues Boston and Brooklyn Steel.
Their catalog runs from early EPs Produce the Juice and Hey Hello through the 2018 debut Joy in the Wild Unknown to Bright Blues, their most recent album on Glassnote Records. Bright Blues was produced by Paul Butler with songwriters Noah Conrad and Ryan Linvill, comprising 12 tracks built around “sleek grooves and bold melodies.” The record came together through real difficulty: lineup changes, management shifts, pandemic-era complications recording across coasts. Ripe frames it as “our love letter to complicated nostalgia, to relentless empowering change.” Wulfsohn’s own description: “The record simultaneously sounds like it has the scars of everything we’ve been through and also that it doesn’t — it’s joyful music.” That tension between hard history and genuine joy is what they carry into every room. No supporting acts are listed for the Buffalo date.
Venue & Logistics
Buffalo Iron Works is at 49 Illinois St. in Buffalo, a consistent anchor on the western New York live music circuit. Doors open at 7 p.m. The show starts at 8 p.m. This is an 18+ event.
Tickets
No ticket price was available from sources at the time of publication. Tickets are sold through Eventim with all-in pricing: the displayed price includes all fees, charges, and taxes. Buy tickets