Sharon Jones And The Dap-Kings, Concorde 2, Brighton, April 12

5:56pm Friday 11th April 2008

"Our lives haven't changed much since playing on Amy Winehouse's record," says The Dap-Kings' tenor saxophonist Neal Sugarman, who has generously agreed to an interview despite the band's gig having sold out weeks ago.

"That project proved to be bigger than any of us had ever expected. We had never heard of her, obviously. But we're all still figuring out how we're going to pay the rent," he laughs.

The band played on half of Back To Black, including the ubiquitous Rehab and I'm No Good singles, and were the backing band on Winehouse's first tour of the US.

Their raw, brass-laden, old-school soul and funk sound had caught the ear of producer Mark Ronson through a mutual friend and he enlisted the group for his Versions album. They have since worked with Robbie Williams and soul legend Al Green, as well as being sampled by Kanye West, although Sugarman insists it hasn't impacted on their work.

"The one thing that has happened is the amount of people wanting to make music with us who are doing it for some reason other than knowing who we are and why we make records," he explains.

"Instead, it's a feeling they can get a piece of what someone else got. Typical music industry nonsense."

Vocalist Sharon Jones's rise has been just as remarkable. Born in James Brown's home town of Augusta, Georgia, she was a session singer during the 1970s but had been reduced to working as prison guard and performing in a wedding band, before hooking up with the Soul Providers, from whose ashes The Dap-Kings rose.

2007 saw her guest perform on Rufus Wainwright's Release The Stars and Lou Reed's Berlin tour, and she is set to make her acting debut alongside Denzel Washington in The Great Debaters later this year.

The Dap-Kings had already enjoyed an international profile after the release of debut album Dap Dippin' in 2002, recorded in a Barcelona kung-fu dojo during a summer residency in Spain. The band now have their own analogue studio in Brooklyn, of which Sugarman was the co-architect.

"We found a landlord who let us turn the first floor of his house into a recording studio," he says. "I'm sure he was mildly shocked when he walked in to see we had disassembled the kitchen completely, pulled all the sinks out and torn down the ceiling to make it more acoustically sound.

"But it was a weird neighbourhood and the building had stayed vacant for a long time, so he was happy."

Sugarman appreciates the UK audiences' long-standing enthusiasm for deep funk, which he experienced in his previous group, Sugarman 3.

"Coming to England there was such an enthusiastic audience for that kind of music," he says. "That's where all the best DJs were, all the people doing the great compilations. There was a real understanding.

"Early on, it was really different to playing anywhere else. Now, more and more people are getting hip to what we're doing. It's still always great to go to the UK and know that you're playing in front of a bunch of people who you can't BS, because they really know those original records."

• 7.30pm, SOLD OUT, 01273 673311

Editor's Choice