Thundercat set to get 'Drunk' at Union Transfer

Whom do Kendrick Lamar, Erykah Badu, Kamasi Washington, Flying Lotus, Kenny Loggins, and Michael McDonald have in common?

Thundercat.

That's the nom de bass of Stephen Bruner, the virtuosic sideman, under-appreciated vocalist and songwriter, and genre-ignoring conceptualist who has just released his highly impressive, alternately whimsical and deeply serious third album, Drunk, on the Brainfeeder label. He plays a sold-out show at Union Transfer on Saturday.

In addition to music recorded under his own name, Bruner has been a key player on a slew of rewarding albums by a coterie of similarly adventurous artists over the the last decade. A small sample would include soul woman Badu's New Amerykah Part One & Two, rapper Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly and Untitled Unmastered, electronic producer Lotus' Until the Quit Comes and You're Dead!, and jazz sax man Washington's triple album The Epic.

The interconnectedness of Bruner and his various collaborators -- all of the above, save Badu, appear on Drunk, as do Pharrell and Wiz Khalifa -- might lead fans to believe that Bruner and pals operate as a sort of free-floating Southern California musical collective.

Not so, says the 32-year-old Los Angeleno, talking on the phone last weekend during a break between sound check and showtime in Chicago.

"Every person is an individual," Bruner says. "I really hate it when people try to call it a collective, because there's so much more to it.  Our lives have intertwined in different ways, and we form different puzzles through what we do."

Bruner grew up in a musical family -- his father, Ron Sr., drummed for the Temptations, among others -- and he has played bass since he was 4. (He can also play violin, though doesn't much these days.) In middle school, he was a member of a packaged multicultural boy band called No Curfew that scored a minor hit and toured in Germany.  Later in his teens, he joined his drumming brother Ron Jr. in the California thrash-punk band Suicidal Tendencies.

In an interview last year, Bruner was asked whom he would prefer to be stuck with if stranded on a  desert island, and he named Loggins and McDonald.

"It started with making jokes on the radio," he says. "But the truth is told in jest. I feel like those guys have lived so much life, there would be so much to tell. You can hear it in their music." It turned out Bruner's keyboard player, Dennis Hamm, knew Loggins' son, who was a Thundercat fan.  Next thing you know, Loggins accepted Bruner's invitation ("I was very serious about it") and was in the studio to write and play on Drunk.

When he showed up, he brought McDonald with him. "They hadn't written songs together in like 18 or 20 years," Bruner says. "When they showed up, accidentally by osmosis, they were wearing almost exactly the same outfit. These guys have been in sync for years. The magic they created just translates into their being."

"I feel it's corny," he says. "It's like calling something neo-soul, or calling something funk. It's compartmentalizing. When somebody asks what it is, you should just be able to say it's good."

Thundercat with Zack Fox at Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden St. at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Sold out. 215-232-2100. utphilly.com