[7][8] McBride and his group Inside Straight of saxophonist Steve Wilson, pianists Eric Reed and Peter Martin, vibraphonist Warren Wolf, and drummer Carl Allen, have performed annually at the New York jazz club Village Vanguard starting from 2007 and been interrupted only by the lockdown as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

McBride has recorded two studio albums with Inside Straight, Kind of Brown in 2009 and People Music in 2013; by this time Peter Martin had taken over the pianist position from Reed.

[9] Brian Priestley of Jazzwise wrote: "The excitement of the performance communicates to the audience (and vice versa), while the intensity of the mostly long tracks ensures that you don’t notice the length.

"[5] Mike Jurkovic of All About Jazz noted: "McBride needs no further introduction save to say he has heightened fun into an art form.

"[1] David Whiteis of Jazz Journal added: "McBride, as always, is strong-fingered and nimble, attaining a remarkable variety of tonal colorations while maintaining his rhythmic sureness even as he bends, twists, and contorts the tunes’ metric structures to his own ends: a paradigm of unforced, unselfconscious virtuosity.