#INTERVIEW MC PHATT AL talks FUNK FLY’N FREE

God Made Me Funky has been around for about twenty years and have just released their newest album Funk Fly’n Free. The band has toured around most of North America and have played big gigs like opening for INXS at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and performing at Nathan Phillips Square for NYE 2013. Chatting with MC Phatt Al was grand as he comes across as a very positive and vibrant artist. Here he is dishing the dirt on the band’s latest project and their past success!

What is your inspiration behind Funk Fly’n Free?
It was to get back into the studio and make another record after a three year hiatus. We kinda decided after the last record that we were going to take a break and then babies were born and people got married. It was a good time to pursue other interests because up to that point we had been touring for up to 8 years consistently.

How does having so many bandmates affect your music making process? Is it stressful? Do you have a system?
This is our 6th album, so we’ve definitely developed a system, so we don’t all kill each other. (laughs uncontrollably for a bit) The good thing about making an album with GMMF is that we have really cool producers who allow us to expound upon our musical taste and where we come from, but keep us in line for the sake of the song. If left unchecked we would have way too many cooks in the kitchen and you would end up listening to something we wouldn’t want to be apart of. The great thing about our producers is that they’re able to hone what we do best for the sake of every song.

GMMF has been around since 96, how do feel the music has evolved?
When the band first started it was an instrumental, fusion, jazz, quartet essentially. It was in the 90’s where there was a lot of that going on with The Brand New Heavies and stuff like that. Our sound has definitely evolved over the last twenty years as new members have come and gone.   For this album we wanted to focus on the retro-electro party funk era of the 80’s and 90’s. So it was really cool to say we’re going to actually keep that in mind when we’re making these songs. Its very different from any of the albums we have put out so far.

On your website you say you are trying to eliminate racism, bigotry and intolerance. How do you think society will get to that point in the future?
When people learn to just come together and party, you know. Just come together and have a good time. We played the New Year’s Eve bash in 2013, it was one of the most amazing shows in our lives. There was 20,000 people coming together to celebrate the new year. When it hits 12 o’clock and that ball drops everybody is on the same page. We are all so happy to be here for another year and it was amazing. The fireworks were going off. We just got to perform one of our bucket list gigs. It was one of the catalysts that made us start wanting to work on another record.  This band has a background of players that are very diverse, musically, culturally. We are quintessential a Canadian band. Its so important to us to have our voices heard, but also to be playing for an audience. We have an extremely diverse audience and its beautiful to have them all come together in one place to get Funky, Fly’n and Free.

You get to perform as a wedding band, what it like seeing so many people get married?
The good thing about it is when they book GGMF, they book us as GMMF and not as a wedding band. The great thing is when we play as GMMF at weddings and events is that we get to see people at the happiest day of their lives with all of their families together and they’re partying with us. They’ve allowed us to share that happiness with them as GMMF. For us its always amazing to see.

We bring that also to our shows, we want everyone of our concerts to be a special experience for people. If that is our legacy we would be happy for that.

What’s the most lavish wedding you got to perform at?
The most lavish wedding is a wedding inspired by Saturday Night Fever. The whole wedding party was dressed in 70’s garb and the bride and groom came out and did the ‘Saturday Night Fever More Than A Woman’ dance sequence on a disco lit floor. It was insane, it was so fun. It was the coolest style concept themes we seen executed.  We got to play a lot of more 70’s theme stuff and again they wanted GMMF for what we do. It was a blast, we felt like The Bee Gees.

You’ve performed all over North America. Where has been your favourite spot to perform?
I would pick four spots.

One is Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Its pretty much on the edge of Eastern Canada. Its a small town, but people on the east coast are so giving and they love to get down, they party hard, its amazing. On our first night there, there were twenty people. By the end of the night, the club was sold out and completely packed. It was a Wednesday night and we were like ‘what happened?’ Basically on the east coast if people are watching a band and they like it, they call their friends and say ‘hey you gotta come down here right now, we don’t know when this band is coming back, come out right now’ and people are like ‘I’ll be right there!’

The multiculturalism of Toronto is so beautiful and for us to be able to play festival gigs and have little kids to their grandparents getting down to GMMF. Seeing people from all these vasts, different walks of life, its so beautiful. It really is a beacon in Canada when you come to Toronto and see what a wonderful city it is.

The third city is Vancouver. We did the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. We were told constantly ‘Hey thanks for having us, thanks for being so nice to us. I know that you have a lot of strangers in your country and it may be frightening’.  And we were telling people ‘No this is Canada, we’re not being nice to you because its the Olympics, we’re nice all the time. This is what Canada is all about’

The fourth place is Cincinatti, Ohio. That’s when we met Bootsy Collins from James Brown Band.When we saw him in the audience we were like ‘that’s Bootsy Collins at our show’ and we went into House of Pain’s Jump Around and he started jumping around. We were like ‘This is insane man! We got Bootsy Collins jumping around in his dark glasses and motorhead vest and his ten gallon big white hat!