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Check out my Funkship Blog and my website, Funkship.com
 I
was born in 1969 and spent the early years of my life moving
from Madison, Wisconsin to Blacksburg, Virginia and finally to
Buffalo, New York where I currently live with my wife and daughter.
During my younger years my mother would take my sister and I
to visit her family, which was still largely located in Hyattsville,
Maryland. It was there, with the help of my hip uncle Richard,
that I discovered the first hint of musical interest, as I would
watch him record himself and various artists and bands in his
recording studio, GlassWing.
At the age of eleven, during one of those trips to his studio,
Richard taught me my first blues scale and it set me on my musical
path, I recorded my first song at the age of 11. It was a very
basic 1-4-5 riff, which was as easy to play as any children.. there
who could actually play an instrument. Having a halfway decent
high school band, we were always the headliner at our school talent
shows and always got to open for the cool local bands at our school
dances. I guess that we couldn’t have been that bad because during
my sophomore year we were asked to open up for the 10,000 Maniacs
at the Riviera Theater, located in a suburb of Buffalo. One of
the sound engineers said that he was expecting some average high
school band not the "Talking Heads of Buffalo". I attribute
that Charlie’s influence on our music.
CamelHead broke up at the end of my senior year when I left Buffalo
to go to Fredonia State College. It was there that I really discovered
Funk. I quickly learned that all the cool people there were musician
or at least music students. After bouncing in and out of a few
different bands (mostly playing either Grateful Dead covers or
blues tunes), I started up a new musical project in protest of
the lack of non-black rooted music. The first song I wrote to define
my movement was a rap tune called "Fred Needs Funk".
It described how every live band I saw there was either Dead driven
or inspired by some suburban 60’s nostalgic groove based hippies.
(Needless to say drugs were mostly free there.) Strangely enough,
people didn’t hate me for it, (they may have hated me for other
reasons). "Fred Need’s Funk" was widely appreciated and
I was on my way to fame! And it seems like it has stayed that way...I
am still on my way to fame, though I get lost every once in a while.
During those good old college days I had a blast playing and recording
with many different friends and musicians. I used to reshape the
band every semester or so, which I believe gave me a very well
rounded approach to writing. Once I graduated, in 1993, I returned
to Buffalo band less, mostly because the last group of guys I worked
with were all going separate was to do separate things. Now I record
here in my house using my Yamaha Motif 8 and Cakewalk Sonar. Other
than continuing to work on my own personal music I also write and
record rap tunes with two friends who happen to be brothers. (Look
for Def Jeff coming to my Funkalizer page sometime in the near
future). I like to think of myself as their producer as I simply
write and record the music and coach them in their delivery of
their lyrics.
I do miss getting up on stage and belting out the lyrics of my
never ending funk revolution anthem "Fred Needs Funk",
but knowing many musicians in this town, sometimes I still get
to. Now I am extremely content writing and recording from home
and occasionally spinning my funk at the local clubs as "DJ
Pharaoh".
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