With its hastily-set-up klieg lights, metal foldout chairs, card tables full of food, and a few sheets of white tarp separating the talent from aisles of Flatstock rock poster shoppers, the Fisher Pavilion Hospitality Room feels like a MASH unit, only with nicer catering...and way more stylin' residents.
Two dozen members of the Wheedle's Groove ensemble are converging in this makeshift space, and talking to various factions of broadcast, online, and print media to promote their set that afternoon at Bumbershoot. All of these seasoned singers and players somehow manage to look damned cool even amidst the sub-army-hospital lighting. It's as if a pinata full of sharp-dressed soul men has been burst open.
Happy Wheedle's Groove Day--literally. Mayor McGinn himself will anoint this day (Saturday, September 4, 2010) with that title soon, in honor of this thirty-piece groove collective. In the meantime, though, it's meet, greet, and interview time for these ambassadors of Seattle's golden age of R&B.
In case you've been living in a state of funk depletion for the last five years, here are the Cliffs' Notes: Indie label Light in the Attic Records put out Wheedle's Groove, a CD compilation of long-lost 1960s and '70s Seattle soul and funk singles, in 2005. It was a major revelation for a lot of Northwest music obsessives (yours truly included), unearthing a thriving and fertile R & B scene that all but vanished 'neath the long shadow cast by the Grunge Era.
A terrific documentary of the same name surfaced earlier this year at the Seattle International Film Festival, providing an absorbing, funny, and powerfully inspirational oral history as accompaniment to the music. Since then, members of many of these vintage outfits (Cooking Bag, Black on White Affair, The Overton Berry Trio, and scores of others) have played live gigs around town, busting out originals and covers easily the equal of anything offered by Motown, Stax, or Muscle Shoals back in the day.
That statement's not just whistling Dixie, either. My lucky draw of the interview cards puts me face-to-face with the creators of some of Wheedle's Groove's undisputed highlights: Curtis Hammond and Leonard Hammond Jr., former frontmen for seventies funk band Broham (dig their gem, "Nothing in Common"); pioneering keyboardist Ron Buford; and Buford's creative collaborator, soul shouter Ural Thomas.
Buford provides some of the Wheedle's documentary's most choice stories, but he isn't feeling terrifically talkative at the moment: five hours of preceding interviews are likely taking their toll. After a brief reminiscence about his past as a Bumbershoot performer (he's played the fest around a dozen times by his estimate), he grouses amusingly about the "corny" security presence and walks away, muttering under his breath like a be-bop Popeye the Sailor. It's a far cry from the animated guy onstage awhile later, coaxing swinging richness from his Hammond B3 as he rocks back and forth in thrall to the groove.
The Hammond Brothers and Thomas more than take up the conversational slack. They're as eager to talk as they are to sing and play, and they sing and play like no one's business during the 90-minute set an hour or two later: The Hammonds harmonize with a soulful clarity that only blood ties can bring; and the septuagenarian Thomas busts out dance moves ( and a primal R&B growl) that coulda caused James Brown to pop a Cold Sweat. Our chat proves a perfect aperitif to one serious platter of live soul.
I've been plugged into the Seattle music scene for over twenty years, and I thought I knew it all. Then I saw the Wheedle's Groove documentary, and heard the songs, and it was like opening the door to grandpa's attic and seeing all this wonderful shit packed in there.
Curtis Hammond: [Laughs] It was lost, and no one would've known about it, were it not for a few things...the CD, the movie.
Leonard Hammond, Jr.: If those things hadn't have happened, it would still be undercover. Which is a shame. But we're glad it got uncovered.
Has this movement led to reunions of the individual bands covered in the documentary, or has it been more of a collective?
Ural Thomas: I would say it's been more of a collective. A lot of the guys that I came up with are either dead, or too sick to even perform. A lot of the guys didn't even want to play anymore. Some of the baddest guys on the planet...they were just so talented and had so many openings for the soul, and then they said they don't want to do it anymore.
LH: For the big finale, you'll see about thirty of us at one time.
UT: And you'll see different ages, from 100 to one. A lot of the young guys, they're so knowledgeable, because it took them a long time to even realize what they were learning as children. And here we are, all together, it's just like magic. It's kids and grown folks together, sharing knowledge, and just sharing love.
CH: The range of the age is quite a bit when we're up onstage, and it feels good to know that there are young folks, and old folks. But once we get up there, we're equal. And we blend and when we play, we have to listen to each other. We have to, to perform right. We learned this, [Ural] learned this, and you have to listen when you're playing; so that means you're talking to each other. We're talking to each other as we're projecting out.
What's this blend of ages been like, collaboratively?
UT: Well, the process has been wonderful because I've met new people doing the same stuff we did as kids, it's like we passed our soul down to them and they shared it back with us. We're coming together. It's a wonderful movement that we've all hungered for, because for awhile it felt like we were gonna be pushed out and just rise above us; but they were so heavy with the stuff they learned from us, they're coming back and they want to do it with us. So it's been like that for me.
LH: It's a constant learning process. When we watched [Ural] play again, it's like, "Man, that's some good stuff!" So we're still checking it out, and still learning, absorbing things. And, like he said, I think when he was watching us, he was thinking, "That's cool!" and absorbing influences, too.
CH: It's a constant give-and-take, feedback.
LH: That's kind of the way music is. We learned that from our dad, and we've learned from Ural, and I'm sure that he learned from his mentors, [like] Ron.
UT: That's where a lot of the change comes from, because I don't want to stay the same. I want to be able to grow with the times, because time does not remain the same. People don't remain the same. The new kids, they've got a whole different concept of hearing the music. We had to learn notes to understand it. Today, you don't have to learn anything, except how to be a computer whiz [laughs] which is OK. There's nothing wrong with that. I can't work a computer. But I can play the real thing, and then when I run into guys that can do the computer thing, I try to get together with them, and we share knowledge. Time don't wait for you. If you think it's gonna wait, it's gonna come back and grab you, and say, "Come on!"
What do you draw from for influences, musically?
LH: Major old-school funk: Earth, Wind and Fire; Stevie Wonder; Cameo; Con Funk Shun...all that kind of stuff. All that music is deep within me.
CH: Me, too. I still listen to all that stuff, and I even go back to some of the stuff my mom and dad listened to when we were five, six years old: Miles, Cannonball [Adderly], Coltraine...That's what I go back to. Then I go back to the funk. Then some blues...
LH: Mostly going back to when we were young. When we were little kids in the house and we were playing with our cars, dad had Miles Davis and Mahalia Jackson playing in the background.
CH: We were probably beating each other up, but we had Mahalia Jackson playing. We probably didn't even know it, but subconsciously we were getting it. Music was always there. Music was always--ALWAYS--playing in the house. My dad was a musician, my mom was a singer...
UT: When I was coming up, it was heavy blues and heavy jazz. So we came along and at first a lot of the stuff we were doing was too heavy. They said, "That's not what Miles and those guys were doing!" They were playing the same chord structures, and we were doing a totally different rhythms on top of the stuff; different time signatures and stuff. Like Dave Brubeck. I got a lot of influence from that 3/4 timing. I'm a dancer, too; and I like movements in odd times. And I like it when a plan comes together [laughs]! That's what happens when a bunch of musicians come together from all different ages and stuff. Everyone's gonna feel it a little different. The horn player's gonna feel it different. They've heard it, but they still want to play it with their flavor.
Any plans to take Wheedle's Groove on the road?
C: There's been talk of it.
UT: Actually, it's not a done deal. Every time people get together, they say, "Man! We should do this!" It's a wonderful thing if something like that jumps up, I think it's past time for something like that to happen. A lot of the time, the young guys and the older guys come together just for the kicks. So it won't stick unless they want to do it.
LH: They have to prove to us that it's gonna be to everyone's benefit to be able to go to these places and do all these things. We have fun with it, but let's be real. You have to get a little from it; make a little money and have a little fun at the same time. Just doing this and not really getting anything back from it, though...We did that for years. We used to play for $25 a night, and believe it or not there are still guys in the city who are still making fity bucks a night...and they made that in the seventies.
UT: They want you to come out and play for nothing. They tell you, "Look, man, you'll get good exposure!" I've been exposed already! [laughs] Can I have some coverage?
LH: How about a blanket [laughs]?
CH: That hasn't changed. That'll always be the same.
I'd imagine that it's a bit of an issue logistically, too, with a pretty big combo.
LH: I think some of the talk is that we're gonna have to tighten up on that. Realistically, we'd have to tighten up a bit on that. But I think it can be done; done with taste and with flavor. And still everybody has a good time. We just have to come together and talk about it, which we haven't done enough of. But we're going to.
UT: We have different players coming out, and a lot of them live in different states, so they couldn't make it back. They had to get guys who were living here; or guys that came through town and said, "I love the stuff that you guys are doing!" They come through and do it for awhile, but there's no money in it, so they can't hang. So then next time, there's someone else playing. It's kinda hard to say that we're gonna take it on the road and that we have a solid package. It hasn't worked like that yet.
LH: That's why we're gonna get together and start talking about it.
CH: We have to talk about what Wheedle's Groove [is]...who Wheedle's Groove is. Right now it's a big collective, like you said. It's hard.
UT: It's a lot of work. And I think that Herman Brown [former Cooking Bag guitarist and de facto coordinator of the Wheedle's Groove live shows] has been doing a wonderful job. He's been gathering people together; working with them, and trying to find out who will and who won't...Who can and who can't. And that's a big job.
LH: That's a big job for a seven-piece group, never mind thirty. You're trying to please everyone and give everyone a shot. Herman Brown, he's the man.
UT: I just met Herman this year through the Wheedle's Groove people. I've come to know him as a wonderful man. I think that he, sincerely, would like for this to work. To find the right combination of people who want to stick with this. Right now, a lot of people are just interested in right now, not the future. If you want to do this and make this work, you can't just throw a bunch of guys together. We worked hard to put it together. Before I took my first gig, my band and me had been together for eight years. But it wasn't a job--I worked two jobs on the side. But when I got off work, we went to my house, or one of the other fellas' houses. That was one of the wonderful things about growing up and not worrying about the money. But as you grow up and stuff, you've got to worry about a family. So that's been one of the most important things for all of us, is to be able to say "I don't mind going from here to Canada, or from here to Alaska, if I can make enough money to leave, so I know when I come back home I don't have to worry if my family's gonna be OK.
When I was younger, they'd call me and say, "Hey, Ural, can you be up here for a gig tomorrow?" And I'd say, "Yeah!" And I'd get on my bicycle. I knew the guys when I got there...We'd been working together for years, never got a chance to rehearse. We had to go right onstage and hadn't seen each other in maybe ten or twelve years. So when we got there, we'd have to sit down and figure it out. "You know this one?" "I"ve been working on this one..." We'd end up with a set list, sometimes, with just ten songs. But we could stretch those ten songs out all night long. Through the process of those ten songs we came up with creative things in between--brand-new songs. And we had worked through the years and made it worthwhile to get together, because everyone was on the same page.
You kind of looked forward to it. You put some time in, trying to get that music together. And every chance you get, you want to get some of it. You want to share it with somebody. It's like, Ural made some new ice cream. Oh, hey, Charles is over there: He's got a whole bucketful of his own. Let's put it together, and we'll have some new ice cream [laughs]! That's how I look at it.
Will the Wheedle's Groove ensemble be recording some more in the near future?
U: Yes. I've got some great ideas for a lot of the older stuff, where I'm doing new words. To me, a lot of the music is not really changeable, but as I've grown older I've learned new things about the...things I already knew. And I've met people that I already knew and had forgotten. So we come together, and they bring up something fresh in my mind. Then I think, "Man, it sure is good to be together again! " And it's always been that way for me. When I get involved, I try to give as much as I can, to make it easy for someone to come up and mess with me any kind of way they want, just to make it complete. We never know exactly what we're gonna say, or do. To bring us back together was something...I didn't think I'd ever be doing these songs on a scale like this. I never thought this would happen.
One of the refreshing things about this appreciation of Wheedle's Groove and old-school soul and funk in general is getting back to the sound of human beings pouring their sweat and their hearts into real instruments.
LH: In real time...
CH: Thank you for noticing that, for caring about that.
UT: You see it, you know, and now you'll share that with somebody--like what we're doing now; sharing information and things that I didn't expect. I thought I'd just go in, perform, and be going home. Now I've been here about twelve hours [laughs]...
CH: And we haven't even started playing yet [laughs]!
UT: It's been so much fun. It's something I've been missing.
LH: It's like a family reunion. And nothing beats a family reunion.
UT: ...Except for a good hamburger [laughs].
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