There’s no question about it, Boukou Groove is one funky party! Led by Donnie Sundal and Derwin “Big D” Perkins, the two masterful musicians combine elements of New Orleans soul music, funk, and R&B. In anticipation of tonight’s very special show at The Maple Leaf to celebrate the release of Boukou Groove’s sophomore album, Let The Groove Ride, we caught up with Donnie to get his take on the band, their travels, and some special guests we should expect to show up at The Maple Leaf tonight.
NOLA’s Boukou Groove Drops Sizzling New Video Ft. Nigel Hall, Announces Maple Leaf CD Release Party
Read on for Malcolm Finkelstein’s exclusive with Sundal:
L4LM: Why is the Maple Leaf the band’s go-to venue in New Orleans?
DS: That basically just boils down to Big D’s connection with the Maple Leaf – we had a big in. With me being from out of town, it took a while for people to get to know me. It was nice to have Big D there to interface and kind of vouch for the band so that they would hire us. That’s his closest to home spot, he’s been doing Monday nights there forever with Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen, and every Jazz Fest they kill it. In the beginning we were trying to play at a bunch of different spots, but there’s no place, you know there aren’t many places that have that built in local crowd that you want to play for. Since then they’ve just embraced us, basically they have been the most consistent in having us back and making a point to give us good dates.
L4LM: Who are your special guests we should expect for Boukou Groove’s CD Release Party on Friday night?
DS: We basically talked to everybody who has ever been on our records with us, so we’ve got Khris Royal, Eric Vogel, and Terence Higgins, who played on the last record, so he’s going to be there as well. And of course drummers AJ Hall and Jamison Ross. I’m sure there will be a whole bunch of other people that will show up. But I wanted to invite everyone who had been on a record to come up on stage with us. I think everyone who will be in town will be able to make it.
This is going to be a great time–we’ve got such a great lineup of musicians. We can’t wait to see everyone at The Leaf.
L4LM: How did you get your chops as a musician and what are some of the highlights of your musical upbringing?
DS: I didn’t really start playing keyboards until I was in my freshman year of high school. Basically, I kind of got railroaded into attending a choir class because I didn’t take my electives, and all they had left was choir. Well, I started in this class and I had a buddy in the exact same boat. It turned out that this guy played some piano, so we would go in the back room while the choir was singing because we literally wouldn’t participate, and he started to show me a few things on a little Wurlitzer they had in the back. I already played some basic guitar, and I guess I already could sing but didn’t really know it. I sang a lot, but I just kind of figured everybody did. I didn’t sing professionally or anything like that. So anyway, that really struck my interest. It kind of all clicked for me, you know, and from there I started playing keyboard and then at some point all I was doing was playing keyboard.
L4LM: Did you study music in school after that?
DS: So after high school, I went to Berkley for a little while, but I didn’t feel like I needed to stay there for an entire term. I knew I just wanted to play more than get a degree. So, I ended up moving to Atlanta and stayed there for a while, and basically kept following the music wherever opportunity would be. I was touring the whole southeast, and eventually wanted to be in a place where I didn’t have to always be running for a little while. So I moved from Atlanta to the Gulf coast to work again and to just be in an area where I could play all the time comfortably.
L4LM: Once you got to the Gulf South, how did you start tuning into what was going on in with New Orleans music scene?
DS: I started doing some gigs with some other people around New Orleans. I guess it was about six Jazz Fests ago, maybe seven, that I ran into Eric Lindell who was living somewhere between Destin–where I live–and New Orleans. He and I kind of hooked up and I started playing some keyboards and singing background vocals for him, just for the New Orleans gigs, particularly during Jazz Fest that year.
L4LM: How did you cross paths with your bandmate, Derwin “Big D” Perkins?
DS: In between playing gigs with Eric Lindell, I could meet a bunch of musicians in New Orleans, and somebody introduced me to Big D. I had some gigs in Destin and we absolutely hit it off the first time that we played together. Big D was living in Chicago at the time, but he decided to move back down and move close to Destin so he could be closer to that world of music again. Anyway, that’s where New Orleans kicked in. It’s just a place with the coolest music scene and it’s only about four hours away, it was perfect. I decided to kind of move around and come down here for a little bit while playing in Destin, too. That started Boukou Groove.
L4LM: So what is Boukou Groove all about?
DS: What we’re going for is trying to play songs that are always groovin’ to people that still have a great life playing in it and a little jam in it, but based around hooks that you can remember for a song that’s pretty catchy. I think that we bring a unique level of songwriting to the table, as well as superb musicianship of everybody that’s coming in, Big D or whoever is coming in on drums is always awesome. But the blend between me and D kind of focusing ourselves on the right songs — That’s what we try to make different about ourselves. We’re not as based on just jamming, but we do love to just groove, too. The records are kind of scaled down, as most records are, when it comes to making a record in the studio, whereas a five-minute guitar solo in the live setting will get turned into 20 seconds on the record.
L4LM: You just came back from a successful Japan tour. Japan loves Boukou Groove on a seriously crazed level, which is so cool to us. Can you talk a little bit about what it’s like playing in Japan, and some of the things that you’ve learned from their music culture and how it differs from here?
DS: Yeah, Japan is like one of the most ideal audiences that you can ever imagine. In New Orleans, music is a part of the fabric of the community and there’s a real appreciation for it, but when you go outside of New Orleans sometimes people are so used to being on their phones that it gets so hard to get them to actually listen. In Japan, when people come to a show, you can hear a pin drop. You can really make a much better connection with the audience because they’re watching and listening to everything you’re doing, regardless of whether they understand English or anything else. When they’re there, they’re 100% into it. Though they’re somewhat conservative as a whole, they’ll come in and be very orderly about where everybody’s sitting, there won’t be anybody mosh-pitting or anything, but they absolutely eat it up.
Especially soul music and New Orleans music, things like that. That’s kind of the most ideal audience for us, people who are really there to just listen. It’s not about all the other things people can be about when they go out. Sometimes people go out to see a live show and it’s not so much about the music–its more about the hang, and you know the other thing I find is that it’s also whatever they like, they like – regardless of anything else. But in Japan, if they really dig something, they will seek it out and buy it and make a souvenir out of it and cherish it. They make you feel great, the way that you want it to be all the time.
L4LM: That’s fantastic. Are there any particular moments in Japan that stand out to you guys, either from this year or from last year?
DS: There are so many. When I got back, I saw this thing that a friend of mine had posted of his little girl in Tokyo. She’s listening to our new song “Let The Groove Ride” off the CD in the car and she’s singing along to it even though she barely speaks English and she’s five years old. And she’s doing a little “Let The Groove Ride” dance!
Our friend and drummer Jamison Ross was amazing in Japan. We met Jamison right when he moved into town. Big D was one of the first people that he looked up. Because of actually Jimmy Hill, Jimmy is kind of like an older brother to Jamison. So we played, right around the CD release of first record, A Lil’ Boukou In Your Cup, four years ago. We were playing with Jamison and we’ve had him on some gigs and at CD release parties. Since then he’s been doing his thing and it’s been really great to get a chance to hook back up with him.
L4LM: What are some of your favorite things about the New Orleans music community?
DS: Well, I love to play in other people’s bands, too, and be the back-up, auxiliary guy. (Laughs) It’s another fun job – being the supporter and not having to feel the whole pressure of the show. It’s fun to do somebody else’s gig because you can just relax and hang out with everybody and not have to worry about all of the details. The thing about New Orleans – there’s obviously a very high level of musicianship throughout all the different “tiers”, from the very young to the older cats. They’ve got young kids coming out of NOCCA (New Orleans Center for Creative Arts) who are ridiculously adept and naturally talented, and they’ve got a lot of great mentors there guiding them.
Of course, every situation you get into in the creative field is highly competitive and you’re dealing with fragile egos constantly, but in New Orleans there really is camaraderie amongst everybody. At least the musicians I know, everybody is really friends and really down for each other and to help each other out. Even at the same time as it being so competitive and all of that, there’s really – it might sound corny – but there’s really a family vibe with your friends that are musicians down here.
L4LM: What are some qualities that people might not necessarily expect about music here, things that new fans who attend local shows may not fully grasp yet, that is special about musicians getting together in New Orleans?
DS: There’s a really awesome diversity of music. You go down one street and run into ten different styles of music that are being preserved only here. It’s mostly the things that equate to the history and the amount of different styles that have such deep roots. I guess just like the city itself, the music is like that. You can’t get bored because you can see so many different kinds of great music that is alive down here like nowhere else. I love all of the different kinds – being able to go see a brass band or a real jazz band or a serious funk band or new funk–whatever you want to see, it’s out there every night.
L4LM: For Boukou Groove’s new album, Let The Groove Ride, you brought in some top-flight musicians from the NOLA region as well as some folks from out of state. Who are these guys and how did they leave their mark on the songs on the record?
DS: Let’s see, from New Orleans, Khris Royal came in with a few other great guys to play horns on a couple songs, young prodigy John Michael Bradford, Paul Robertson of the Soul Rebels, and Ashlin Parker of New Orleans Jazz Orchestra and Trumpet Mafia. We recorded both at my studio in Destin and at Matt Grondin’s studio (The Parlor Studio, New Orleans.) Khris arranged all horn parts on the spot in both instances. Then Nigel Hall came in and sang on a couple of songs. He of course sang on “Let The Groove Ride” and he sang on “Take You Low” and played organ. Then Eric Vogel plays bass on a track and AJ Hall played drums on almost the whole thing. We were thrilled to have Jimmy Hill from Jacksonville and Junior Marvin of The Wailers on this record. Junior and I wrote the song “Corners” together, we had been working on that and playing for a little while and I realized that if I just changed the drum beat it would be a blend between all kinds of different stuff, it wasn’t reggae at all but it had that kind of swing. When we had AJ redo it, it had kind of a funk to it. We weren’t even sure it was going to be on the record but at the last minute we just changed the drums and hooked that up. Junior wrote and played lead guitar and rhythm guitar on that. Also, Simone Gordon, at Junior’s suggestion, was brought in while we were doing some shows together, she’s a great background singer–she sang for Stephen Marley and some other great musicians, she did the backgrounds just on that song. That’s really it, so we didn’t have a ton of extra guests on it – but just a few of our good friends.
L4LM: We’ve been looking forward to your answer for this question : Why is Big D the smoothest guitar player to ever hit New Orleans?
DS: (Laughing) Well, he’s the greatest. Everybody describes him as smooth because it’s so effortless. What’s different about Big D is his musicality. He’s playing music from the perspective of a songwriter, singer, guitar player and producer, not just from the perspective of a guitarist. He’s playing more from within the DNA of the song itself. There are some musicians who can play really well and when it’s time for a solo they can play anything on the planet, but they don’t necessarily play the right parts and stick to it. Big D is the guy you want because once he locks in on a part, even though he can go wherever he wants, he locks down home base. That’s really what funk is, just sticking to the same foundation over and over again. Big D does that so well, it’s in his pocket. His groove is amazing.
L4LM: You, in particular, are definitely one of the more animated people on stage that we see in New Orleans…
DS: Laughing… That’s the nice word for it.
L4LM: You and Big D are a pretty great match–you’re never still and you never sit down. Meanwhile, with Big D it’s like all of his energy channels strictly through his hands and his swaying head. Where does your kid-like energy come from?
DS: I’m just so much more comfortable when I’m standing up. Because of singing, when you’re standing up, you can actually push it up from your legs. I do like standing better. But it looks weird. Sometimes people are like “Man, can you just sit like a normal keyboard player?”