“The Funk Chronicles” are a series of conversations between L4LM writer Brian Turk and funk musicians who help laid the foundations of funk, as well those carrying the funk torch forward. Here is the first part in the series, a conversation with Joey Porter, keyboard player for The Motet and Juno What?!

BT: Let’s talk about how you got started with The Motet. 

JP: I had known Dave (Watts) and the rest of The Motet guys for a few years before I moved to Colorado. Once I moved to Colorado from Oregon, and there was a slot open in the band, I was right there and jumped right in.

BT: What kind of music were you playing in Oregon, and who were you playing with?

JP: I had had my own band, called Porterhouse, out of Portland. We were doing funk-fusion stuff, like Herbie Hancock or George Duke, that kind of stuff. Mostly instrumental music in the funk and jazz styles. At that time, The Motet had a lot of world music influence in their sound, so my style fit well.

BT: What’s your personal history with funk music. As a listener and as a musician?

JP: I have always loved funk. I like the fun and happiness it inspires, and I like the lightness of it-as far as the lyrical material. There is no super deep political funk image really, at least in funk nowadays.  Funk is all about  dancing and romance.

BT: Has your personal playing style evolved since you have been with The Motet?

JP: I guess we think that all of us in The Motet have gotten better since we started playing in the band. I think I have held the same style the whole time. I have been doing the funk thing for 20 years, and I am glad it’s cool now, because that makes it even better. I have added on some more gear and play four keyboards to get the sound we have now, but other than that I just stay funky.

BT: Funk music is having a resurgence/revival over the past 5-10 years, and I think it has been very dramatic in terms of people creating new material and playing it live. Do you agree? 

JP: Absolutely.

BT: Funk has never been dead in the eyes of enthusiasts, but there was a span of time when there weren’t any bands recording and touring on new funk material. There were original funk bands touring, or there were people digging in crates finding old funk music, but there weren’t new groups forming. I see it being linked to the festival scene and jam band scene.

JP: I agree. The jamband and festival scene are the people who pick up on the funk. I played in funk bands all throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, and being in a funk band was like being in a period piece. Funk was something from the past.

Funk music really just means the music has a funky beat , so there is a lot of room for interpretation and a lot of different kinds of funk music. My other band Juno What?! plays this 80s rollerskating kinda disco funk. Then there is hittin hard Sly and The Family Stone kinda funk, like Dumpstaphunk. Or more solo R&B type funk.

BT: This is something that is very important to me personally, and Ian Neville is the one who turned me on to the perspective: There is no Grammy category for funk music. Thoughts on that?

JP: If you went out on the street, and started talking to people about funk, most people wouldn’t even know what you meant. They would think you are saying a bad word or something.

BT: Exactly. If you say rock, country or blues to someone, they could immediately identify the sound in their head and know what you are talking about. Funk is a foreign word to many people, yet it is a unique form of American music.

JP: Exactly.

BT: Most major label releases, whether it be The Meters. WAR, Parliament-Funkadelic, Sly and The Family Stone…all of them were released, promoted and classified as R&B records, even though there was nothing about funk that was rhythm and blues (except the fact that black musicians were making the music). There has never been an official category of funk. It seems like people at the record companys wanted funk to get lost in the shuffle…and it eventually did. What I am trying to identify, and you are on the same page with me, is when NEW funk music began being created, and bands stopped being a cover band, period piece, or a band from “the past” providing nostalgia to fans, and became an integral part of our current musical fabric. When did you start noticing things change as a musician?

JP: I have been hoping people would embrace funk on this level for a long time, and I really started noticing funk everywhere around 2010. Not just funk music, but the word funk and funky become more used in popular culture. It is defiantly the folks who go on Jam Cruise and to festivals, and the New Orleans/Brooklyn connection to funk that helped make all that happen.

BT: What is it about New Orleans and Brooklyn that connects to funk?

JP: It just seems that when you go to those East Coast festivals, half the funk bands are from New Orleans, and the other half are from Brooklyn. It’s that simple.

BT: When I think of funk, I think of New Orleans, but that’s only because I have lived there, I have gone to Jazz Fest, and I got sucked into funk in New Orleans. Do you think people outside New Orleans automatically associate it with  funk?

JP: Those in the know….know. I think if you said, “Name a funk city”, New Orleans would not be the first one out of the bag.

BT: What is the city you associate with funk the most?

JP: Dayton, Ohio. That’s where the Ohio Players, Slave, Parliament, Bootsy Collins…it’s where the most funk bands ever are from.

BT: Well, let me ask you this, who would you identify as the “first” funk band.

JP: James Brown.

BT: When James Brown brought in musicians like Bootsy Collins, Maceo Parker and Clyde Stubblefield, James Brown took the leap to funk. There was a defining moment. He was like, “I am not the Godfather of soul anymore, now I am the Funky President.

JP: That’s right!

BT: And that happened very quickly. Can you think of any funk bands that only played funk from the get go?

JP: Most funk bands incorporated some ballads and soul tunes. There really wasn’t anyone who was playing, “just funk’. Bands didn’t even call themselves funk bands until like 1977. Before that, if you were black, you were in an R&B band, according to the suits. Once bands like Cameo and The Gap Band came out, people started to call the music funk. That wasnt till the late 70s. That era only lasted about 5 or 6 years. Then funk was gone.

BT: I call the time from the end of the funk era until our current modern funk era the “dark days of funk”. The Funk went somewhere else, as an energy form, and then reappeared.

JP: You know, that happens all the time with music. Jazz is a good example. Bebop was cool for a while, there was a smooth jazz era. What happened with funk is what happened with black music in the 70s and 80s, and that history has been glanced over. Things are cyclical. Now funk is back.

BT: What do you think modern audiences are connecting to in funk?

JP: I think people connect to the driving beat, and I think funk simply makes people feel good. And it makes them dance. I think a lot of people like being active at a concert, and dancing. They don’t want to sit and quietly watch the show, or just stand there and nod their heads and look cool. When you are a funk band, you are literally throwing a dance party for people.

BT: And hopefully it’s the soundtrack to getting people laid. 

JP: Exactly! I even say that in my lyrics of a Juno What?! song. Funk is the only music that is shamelessly sexy. 

BT: What do you see as the future of funk? Do you think funk has embedded itself into popular music enough to not have another dark time?

JP: Well, that’s hard to say. The biggest song of last year was that Bruno Mars song “Uptown Funk”, which harkens back to the Morris Day and The Time, Prince or the Rick James era of things. The fact that song was number one is great for someone like me, who plays funk music for a living. Funk is hopefully penetrating the popular music world a little more than it has been over the past 20 years I have been in fledgling funk bands.

BT: Well, I wouldn’t exactly call The Motet a fledgling funk band anymore. You have a ton of forward momentum over the past few years. I mean, you are headlined Red Rocks.

JP: Yes, there has been some upward mobility. I mean, I still set up my own gear. You aren’t a rock star till someone is carrying your gear. (Laughs)

BT: Are you working on new material currently?

JP: We recorded a bunch of new tracks in New Orleans right after Jazz Fest this year.  We plan on having a new album out in March/April 2016. We have been playing three or four of the new tunes this summer on the festival circuit, and people really seem to be digging them.  We got Eric Krasno from Soulive and Lettuce is producing it. We are putting analog tones on tape, and focusing on that authentic tone.

BT: Right on, well thanks for taking the time to talk to us. Gotta have that funk!

[Cover Photo from The Motet’s ‘Mixtape 77’ Halloween in Chicago, courtesy of Chad Smith]