Dumpstaphunk Spotlights Emerging Artists Karina Rykman and R.L. Cooper for Benefit Concert

On Saturday, January 27, the Miami Beach Bandshell will welcome New Orleans funk outfit Dumpstaphunk for an evening of high-energy fun for a good cause. No strangers to performing at the beachside venue, Dumpstaphunk returns to the bandshell to headline a benefit show to raise money for the Miami Beach Jewish Community Center (JCC). The event will also showcase a pair of lesser-known artists: emerging bassist Karina Rykman and local guitarist R.L. Cooper.

Rykman is an up-and-coming bassist and singer-songwriter from New York who has cultivated a following among the niche jam band community throughout the Northeast. Last year, she independently released her debut full-length studio album, which Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio coproduced. She has been the bassist in pianist Marco Benevento's band since 2016.

Karina's appearance at the upcoming benefit concert will be the first of more than a dozen shows she has scheduled across the country to start the year. She'll return to Florida in May for a performance in Miramar Beach in the Panhandle.

"This is the calm before the storm," Rykman says with a chuckle during a recent phone conversation with New Times from her home in snowy New York City. "Talk about a great time to go to Miami," she adds.

Karina has been enjoying the well-deserved time off from touring while she can, having recently returned from a holiday in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

"These days, I can actually write and rehearse with the band and get everything kind of prepared as opposed to most of last year; we had such little time between tours," she notes of her busy 2023 schedule.
While Rykman and her bass are familiar to jam-band fans across the country thanks to the exposure she's received as a fan-favorite member of Benevento's trio, the coming weeks will see her playing in several big markets for the first time with her name on the marquee on this tour.

Karina also oversees the essential duties of being her own tour manager, directing the operational logistics of the run. "It takes a lot out of you, even if you love it more than anything, which I do," she says of her job as a full-time touring musician. "This is sort of a nice moment of stillness for a lot of musical kernels to rise to the top and for me to do things with them."

Rykman left her day job in early 2020 to focus solely on music with her band, a minimalist trio with her "dear friends from NYU," guitarist Adam November, and drummer Chris Corsico. The group performs Karina's original material with her vocals for songs with a more traditional verse/chorus structure, which blends into improvisational exploration as is customary among jazz- and jam-band playing styles.

"They were my friends who I improvised with, and we would just play these two-hour-long, completely improvised shows," Rykman says of the band's formative years together. "It somehow gained a bunch of traction, and then I was like, 'Guys, I think we should write songs, ya know?'"

Already familiar with the challenging art form of improvisational playing, Rykman leveled up her song-writing game and song-structuring abilities during the making of her debut album with help from jam band guitar deity Trey Anastasio.

"With Trey producing my record and playing on five of the nine songs, our focus has always been more on songwriting," Karina says about the mentorship she's received from the Phish bandleader. "And Trey is really a person who is, I would say, almost obsessed with original music and pushing the art form forward in that regard."

"Of course, he's one of the finest improvisers to ever live," she adds, "but when we talk, it's more about songs and how songs make a career and how that's the most important thing in a lot of ways."
Local guitarist and singer R.L. Cooper is another player on the January 27 benefit show bill familiar with the jam band extended universe.

The Mississippi native with a straightforward roots rock sound first moved to South Florida in 2001. He remained in the Miami area for a decade before journeying around the country and ultimately returned to South Florida in 2016. "I've been around," Cooper acknowledges during a recent call with New Times.

Cooper taught himself to play guitar during his freshman year of college in the late 1990s and began playing open mics and small local venues like Dave's Dark Horse Tavern in Starkville, Mississippi.

"My band in college was a jam band," he says, referencing his early playing days. "We played all types of covers and originals, from Widespread Panic to Phish and the [Grateful] Dead, so I know that scene really well."

The first band Cooper found himself in after moving to Miami in the early 2000s went by the name Nueva York. "We had a monthly gig at Tobacco Road in that upstairs room," Cooper says of his first stint as a Miami musician. "The guitar player and I would play the alternate week on the patio until I moved out of town and that band broke up."

Cooper adds he had been on a hiatus from performing by the time he returned to Miami in 2016 but regained his passion for playing a few years later, around the time venues were hosting outdoor performances during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

"I just happened to go to a place called HeartLand [just east of Little Haiti and now permanently closed], and they were doing Wednesday night jams," he adds.

At HeartLand, Cooper befriended Vincent Raffard, a French singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who heads the local ensemble the French Horn Collective. The relationship resulted in gig opportunities for Cooper as the opener for other artists and eventually led to headlining shows originally billed as Cooper and the Continentals.

"From there, it started the whole thing again for me and playing out here in Miami and starting to build a band and music and all the rest," Cooper adds.

At its core, Cooper's style of music is a roots rock foundation with country and Americana generously sprinkled throughout, giving him a unique identity in a market dominated by electronic music.

"My type of music, I'm kind of an anomaly here, and I think that's why we got a lot of notice when we played at HeartLand," Cooper admits. "We were a rock and roll, blues rock, a little bit of country and Americana in the middle of Miami. People would come up to us and say, 'Man, we've been looking for something like this.'"

Cooper continues, "For me, it's not as rich as it would be in a Nashville or Atlanta or Austin, but I think there's a spot for it and space for it, hence the reason we're playing this show here on Sunday."

Dumpstaphunk and Karina Rykman. With R.L. Cooper. 6 p.m. Saturday, January 27, at Miami Beach Bandshell, 7275 Collins Ave., Miami Beach; miamibeachbandshell.com. Tickets cost $40.69 to $190.55 via dice.fm.