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Speaker 1: Happy Black Music Month?
Speaker 3: All right? Yo? What up?
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Speaker 4: Last week we got into part one of our interview
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Speaker 1: Get ready for part two. We go even deep and
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Speaker 2: Yep, I asked you initially then we got sidetracked, but
Speaker 2: can you just briefly talk about what the gospel circuit
Speaker 2: is like in remember I told you that the whole thing, Like, okay,
Speaker 2: you're touring with the Winings, what is what is a
Speaker 2: working musician making with the winings?
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty eighty one just keep it and tel
Speaker 1: conditions like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, are y'all in one hotel and the wine is
Speaker 4: in another one?
Speaker 3: Eighteen were the same.
Speaker 1: There is there a rider.
Speaker 2: I just want to know, like what a working musician
Speaker 2: makes in the gospel circuit? Like are you playing chess churches?
Speaker 2: Is it banquet halls? Is the theaters?
Speaker 1: Like take me through? Are you get me a gig?
Speaker 1: Darmming with the with the Winings? It explained to me
Speaker 1: the whole process.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the Winings when they came out their record,
Speaker 3: they had a great manager. They had a couple of
Speaker 3: great managers, Derek Dirtson was one of them, a couple
Speaker 3: of other people, and they had writers, you know, down
Speaker 3: to just like a because these managers managed secular acts.
Speaker 3: So they had writers, and we were doing mainly theaters,
Speaker 3: and back at that time they had this thing called
Speaker 3: the World's Greatest Gospel Show. James Cleveland, mighty clouds, and
Speaker 3: they were doing arenas. They were doing literal arenas like
Speaker 3: Cobo Hall or something. And so we did a lot
Speaker 3: of big, big dates. When we did a church, we
Speaker 3: felt like, you know, it was beneath us, you know,
Speaker 3: even church with big because we were used to not
Speaker 3: doing churches. The Wine has had a thing that they said,
Speaker 3: we don't want to play churches because we don't want
Speaker 3: to alienate some people don't want to come to church,
Speaker 3: and we want everybody to hear our music. So we
Speaker 3: did a lot of theaters, you know, did a lot
Speaker 3: of theaters, uh Beacon Theater. We did Radio City, We
Speaker 3: did a lot of a lot of things. So they
Speaker 3: had a writer. We all stayed in the hotel. We
Speaker 3: traveled by Greyhound, bus and van. Every now and then
Speaker 3: we would we would fly, but we we we traveled.
Speaker 3: We didn't have no problem loading up in a sixteen
Speaker 3: passenger you know and hiding down the road. You know.
Speaker 3: So that was the case. But here's let's let's talk
Speaker 3: about the money. Thank you. It got strange, It got
Speaker 3: really weird, got weird. I started off making because I
Speaker 3: knew they were charging like three fifth thirty five hundred
Speaker 3: the night. Then they were moving up four thousand dollars
Speaker 3: that they were moving up the ranks, and they we
Speaker 3: started off making two fifty a night, and we was like, man,
Speaker 3: this is great money. Well, somebody told them, like, you know,
Speaker 3: as you guys make more money, the band is going
Speaker 3: to make less money. And they took that wrong. So
Speaker 3: when they went up to forty five hundred, we went
Speaker 3: down to one seventy five. When they went up to
Speaker 3: five thousand, we went down to like one hundred. They
Speaker 3: got down to fifty dollars a night because they were like, hey, hey,
Speaker 3: you know what else y'all gonna play? Well, who else
Speaker 3: y'all gonna play for? You know, we don't we the
Speaker 3: only kind of game in town, you know. And we
Speaker 3: literally got down to fifty dollars a night. And I
Speaker 3: was on welfare. I was literally collecting unemployment and having
Speaker 3: to go out of town. So I go to Oakland.
Speaker 3: I have to stop off at the unemployment office. I
Speaker 3: go into I go into KFC right next to the
Speaker 3: unemployment office. Say hey, y'all looking for anybody, y'all got applications?
Speaker 3: They say, now, we ain't hiring and not going to
Speaker 3: in the in the job. Yeah, and they say, okay, cool,
Speaker 3: I signed, I go back. I beget like my fifty
Speaker 3: dollars from the Wine's three nights, I got a pluck
Speaker 3: fifty plus. That wasn't per diem. That your perdaem was
Speaker 3: in your pay So I'm going wait, wait wait wait
Speaker 3: wait wait oh wow. It was it was kind of
Speaker 3: it was it was it was, it was. It was
Speaker 3: a thing. You know, how did you let it get that? Man?
Speaker 1: Why did why did you guys.
Speaker 3: Let it get to that point?
Speaker 1: Like that was yo?
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm just curious as like you didn't nobody
Speaker 2: ever say anything like okay, now it's one hundred, that's no.
Speaker 3: No. My drummer, my my, my, one of my best
Speaker 3: friends in the group at the time, his name was
Speaker 3: Sandy loved it. He was a great drummer, and he
Speaker 3: just got your point, said, man, I can't go out
Speaker 3: for this. I got to get a job. I'm going
Speaker 3: to give me a job at Chrystler. And we had
Speaker 3: meetings like guys, can we get more money? And they
Speaker 3: were at a place where they were so hot. They
Speaker 3: were like, if you don't want to play, you know
Speaker 3: somebody else, And that was just the way it was.
Speaker 3: And they weren't me, and they would just call themselves
Speaker 3: being business people. And I stayed as long as I
Speaker 3: physically could. I was making I literally man was on
Speaker 3: welfare and playing and I just stuck it, hung in there.
Speaker 3: I never forget we'd do went to California for a month,
Speaker 3: and I had to pay for my own food. Every
Speaker 3: now and then they would pay for our food. You know,
Speaker 3: come on and sit on down. But they only had
Speaker 3: a few gigs. We probably had seven gigs out there,
Speaker 3: so fifty times seven is what it was. And I
Speaker 3: had to eat. So when I went home, I probably
Speaker 3: went home literally with like one hundred and eighty bucks
Speaker 3: in my pocket. If yeah what I'm saying. But my
Speaker 3: thing was, I loved it so much and I thought,
Speaker 3: at being young and gouble, I'm like, well, this is
Speaker 3: how it goes. I'm not leaving. This is the best
Speaker 3: place for me, So it's not gonna be about money.
Speaker 3: I didn't realize. I was learning it's not about money.
Speaker 3: When you do this, you got to have a passion.
Speaker 3: So that's what it was.
Speaker 1: Another question I always wanted to know.
Speaker 2: I'm you know, I grew up in uh uh, you know,
Speaker 2: a household with at least three thousand records.
Speaker 1: I'm very, very very familiar with the.
Speaker 2: Light label, so I know about the history of Ralph
Speaker 2: Carmichael a man and whatnot. Could you explain that for
Speaker 2: our listeners and to me too, because I know very little,
Speaker 2: Like was like a Detroit label, and like why were
Speaker 2: why was that the was that the go to? Was
Speaker 2: that the motown of gospel labels back then?
Speaker 3: It was Andre Crouch made Light Records. Andre Crouch were
Speaker 3: really good friends and Ralph and invested in Andre's earliest music,
Speaker 3: you know, and then Andre just blew it up, man,
Speaker 3: and just he just that's what did it. That's what
Speaker 3: did it. Andre Crouch built Light Records, and then the
Speaker 3: Winers went. At that same time, Andre had a little
Speaker 3: something and they had to kind of part ways. Andre
Speaker 3: went to Warner Brothers, you know, from there, and so
Speaker 3: the Winings ran Light Records, and Light Records was a
Speaker 3: major major force. But it was from La they lived.
Speaker 3: They were out in Pasadena and somewhere out there, and
Speaker 3: you know out there that's where Light Records was.
Speaker 1: The Hawkers too. The Hawkers were.
Speaker 3: In the Bay Area and they were on Light Yeah,
Speaker 3: the first record and all of their records were on
Speaker 3: Light Records. Yeah, Light was the major lay with that.
Speaker 3: For Word Records hadn't even come into play yet, you know,
Speaker 3: Light was the thing. And then Ralph he retired and
Speaker 3: gave his reins over to another guy. And that's when
Speaker 3: commission came man, and we salvage because we were making
Speaker 3: money for Light Records. You know, we was really turning
Speaker 3: some records off.
Speaker 2: Okay, so now that we're there, can you please tell
Speaker 2: me just the average creative at least for I'm going
Speaker 2: on and the go tellus, like your first two records,
Speaker 2: can you tell me what the creative process is for
Speaker 2: making those albums?
Speaker 1: As in, who's the alpha that makes the decisions? Who?
Speaker 1: How do you guys?
Speaker 2: Especially, I mean there's six of you or seven of you,
Speaker 2: six of you, like, is it really democratic or is
Speaker 2: it just like what you say goes or what?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: What's the as Fonte would say, sort of the division
Speaker 2: of labor in creating these records?
Speaker 3: Man, I was good, and I've always been good at delegating,
Speaker 3: you know, I understood it. So I broke the group
Speaker 3: up into two pieces because the singers, Carl Mitchell and
Speaker 3: Keith they were really Mitchell was he was. He was
Speaker 3: kind of key in learning the music side, but I
Speaker 3: had a very funk background, so I would divide it
Speaker 3: up into here's the singers, this is what we do,
Speaker 3: and then it was Michael Brooks and myself, Me and Mike.
Speaker 3: Mike was a keyboard player and he was the songwriter,
Speaker 3: so we would take his songs. He would say this
Speaker 3: is this, this, this, this, and then we would add
Speaker 3: the flare to we put the swag on it. Mitchell
Speaker 3: and I would put the swag on it, and I
Speaker 3: was It was never about me, you know, running the show.
Speaker 3: We were just glad that Mike Brooks was such a
Speaker 3: good songwriter. He was phenomenal. All of them songs back
Speaker 3: then basically came from him. We didn't even know anything
Speaker 3: about songwriting. He was teaching us, but we took his
Speaker 3: songs and we made them as good as they could be. So,
Speaker 3: you know, we just we understood that level. So I
Speaker 3: was really a producer from that angle. Mike was the writer,
Speaker 3: arranger and producer, so we worked well together. You know.
Speaker 3: We we never saw anything different from Timmy, Jimmy and
Speaker 3: Terry or or from Babyface in La so we just
Speaker 3: took it that you know, you work together, you know,
Speaker 3: whatever you feel, how you feel about that? He said,
Speaker 3: oh I like that. I say, well, I like what
Speaker 3: you're doing. So we just did that and it worked,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean? That was up.
Speaker 4: What was the in terms of stacking you'll recording your
Speaker 4: background vocals?
Speaker 1: What was that process?
Speaker 3: Like John Yash a good friend of mine, great great engineer.
Speaker 3: He ended up getting fired off our first record because
Speaker 3: a lot of.
Speaker 2: Firing going on in the commission, yall was getting people
Speaker 2: out of there. Cut never heard the word fire so much.
Speaker 3: So here's what we were doing. We heard a different
Speaker 3: sound from what everybody else heard when it comes to the background.
Speaker 3: So we took and we stacked you know, each part,
Speaker 3: you know four four and for and and our backgrounds
Speaker 3: were more Clark Sisters. One of the songs that we
Speaker 3: learned our first song.
Speaker 4: When you say real quick, just so when you say
Speaker 4: four four four are each one of y'all like four
Speaker 4: of y'all singing the same part, and y'all are tracking
Speaker 4: four of us.
Speaker 3: Singing and racking. We sing two tracks because it was
Speaker 3: twenty four track at that time, so we really had
Speaker 3: to manage you jump. So we were singing the bottom,
Speaker 3: then we sing the middle. Then sometimes Mitchell Carlin and
Speaker 3: I would sing the top, or just Mitchell Carlin mitchellul
Speaker 3: singing the top. So we had six tracks of vocals,
Speaker 3: but we we had intrigates parts because we were always
Speaker 3: concentrating on the Clark systems. Our first song we ever
Speaker 3: learned in my mother's in my mother's living room was
Speaker 3: lookith it's the plain speed a praise speed rain lood
Speaker 3: hell me to ze. Yeah. When we sang that and
Speaker 3: learned that, man, we ran out like we ran a
Speaker 3: grand We jumped off off the porch. We learned it.
Speaker 3: So we said, this is how our vocals are going
Speaker 3: to be. So now we're singing this song. If we
Speaker 3: have a lead, lord be full, sure they and we're
Speaker 3: singing it. And sure they need surely we need sure they,
Speaker 3: we need him na. And when we did that part,
Speaker 3: we were amazed. But the engineer said, no, you can't
Speaker 3: have the vocals up that loud. They need to be
Speaker 3: back here. I said, but they don't sound good back there.
Speaker 3: We want them up louder because it's like background leads.
Speaker 3: And we had a thing because nobody was doing it
Speaker 3: that way. So finally he put him where he wanted
Speaker 3: him and we just said okay. Cool. I went into
Speaker 3: the stage manager, I mean the studio manager. I told her.
Speaker 3: I said, you know, we need to get our masters.
Speaker 3: She said you leave it. Yeah, and she said why.
Speaker 3: I said, I didn't want to get him, you know fired,
Speaker 3: I want you know? He said, well, we think our
Speaker 3: voice woes sound better up here. He said, who's paying
Speaker 3: for this? Is he paying for this? We pay? Are
Speaker 3: you paying? And I said we are. She said, you
Speaker 3: better grow a pair. I'm gonna teach you how to
Speaker 3: be a man. Record next week came back. It was
Speaker 3: a different engineer there and he turned it up wherever
Speaker 3: we wanted and the commission sound was berthed.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: The very next album though, we went back with John
Speaker 3: and he got it and he was here with.
Speaker 1: The assignment brother, brother Hammond.
Speaker 2: Can you explain the influence and what makes the Clark
Speaker 2: sisters their sound or their blend, like, what makes it
Speaker 2: so spe than anyone's form a background blending or whatnot?
Speaker 1: Twinkie fun word Twinky Clark.
Speaker 3: At that time, Twinkie Clark, Twinkie was Stevie to us
Speaker 3: how she played when she sat down to how she played,
Speaker 3: how she arranged her harmonies and what she did it
Speaker 3: was just amazing. And so you have Karen and Derinda
Speaker 3: and you have you had Denise at that time, and
Speaker 3: Jackie and Tweinakie was giving out these crazy parts and
Speaker 3: these crazy chords and it was blowing us all the way.
Speaker 3: It was amazing. If you go back and listen to it,
Speaker 3: the recordings weren't that great productionalizing sonically, you know, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of mistakes that kept going. But if you
Speaker 3: listen to the heart of Twinkie Clark's arranged, it was
Speaker 3: just with like that praying spirit. That is an amazing song.
Speaker 3: That was our north star to say, we want to
Speaker 3: make people feel like this about our record because at
Speaker 3: that time we didn't want to sound like the Windings
Speaker 3: because they were kind of straight ahead, you know, four
Speaker 3: Tops Temptations, you know, they they were that we wanted
Speaker 3: to be different. They were that time, go back to
Speaker 3: go back to go active. Question is no no no
Speaker 3: no no no no no no no no, just straight.
Speaker 1: So to you to you.
Speaker 2: That was regular, just regular flat like harmony one on one.
Speaker 3: It was one o one.
Speaker 1: My My parents lived for that record.
Speaker 2: So I'm growing up thinking that the Winings are the
Speaker 2: epicenter of you know, and the absolute force of gospel singing.
Speaker 2: But for you that was just normalized. And the Clark
Speaker 2: sisters were top shelf.
Speaker 3: It was as far as being creative, the Clarks were
Speaker 3: top shelf. As far as the blend the Whinings brothers,
Speaker 3: there was a blend like no other because they were family.
Speaker 3: So we took the we took the polished of the Winings,
Speaker 3: and we took the creativity of the Clark sisters. And
Speaker 3: that's what commissioned. So if the Winings commission and Clark
Speaker 3: Sists got together, then they produced us, you know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying. So that's what you hear, you know. But
Speaker 3: it was about Twinkie. Twinkie was beast. She was a beast.
Speaker 3: She was she was amazing, and that's where we got
Speaker 3: it from.
Speaker 2: So okay, actually, I want to direct this to James
Speaker 2: because here's the deal. Again, we're not you know, at
Speaker 2: the top of the show, I explained that when I
Speaker 2: was in high school it was almost like a gang experience,
Speaker 2: and I'm at performing arts school and you got like
Speaker 2: one cat.
Speaker 1: Like Kurt Rosenwinkles into Frank Zappa, So you got to
Speaker 1: learn his language.
Speaker 2: But then like Chris McBride and Joey Di Francesco are
Speaker 2: heavy jazz cats, so you got to listen to like
Speaker 2: anything on Blue Note. And then of course, you know,
Speaker 2: my partner Triga is hip hop and whatnot. And so
Speaker 2: there was the fourth category of cats who only lived
Speaker 2: for Commission. And so you know, like I, even though
Speaker 2: we didn't go to this same school together, like little
Speaker 2: John Roberts as a drummer, was how I knew commission.
Speaker 2: Because the thing is, you know, like I'm thinking, like
Speaker 2: with my legacy of who my dad was and whatnot'm
Speaker 2: finally like in a high school situation which I could
Speaker 2: play like all city jazz band all that stuff. So
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, like the red carpet is just ready for
Speaker 2: me and like, you know, for me to get my
Speaker 2: thing on. And little John Roberts, who's way younger than
Speaker 2: I was, Like he's like three four years younger. You
Speaker 2: know this, this little you know, eighth grade runt is
Speaker 2: playing like an adult and I'm like, wait what and
Speaker 2: he's little John's let me know, like like.
Speaker 1: You don't know about Commission.
Speaker 2: And I'm realizing, you know, cause again I was team
Speaker 2: Prince that's that's who. That's who I chose that you know,
Speaker 2: sprints the time and all that stuff. I wasn't him
Speaker 2: to commission. And yet all my peers, like all those
Speaker 2: first generation monster Cats were just like taking every word
Speaker 2: as like bond so for you, for you, James, like
Speaker 2: how how much of their work, like was influential to
Speaker 2: you coming up in your dad's church and whatnot?
Speaker 5: Oh my see, I grew up and my father's a
Speaker 5: bishop and a Jamaican bishop, which means that we ain't
Speaker 5: We couldn't do nothing. As my dad said, you count
Speaker 5: do this, your count do that.
Speaker 1: He had to sneak to listen to commission.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, no, no no. That was the only
Speaker 5: those are the only records that I could listen to,
Speaker 5: you know, we I grew up, you know, the records
Speaker 5: that were in the house where the Andree Crouch and
Speaker 5: the Hawkens and so forth and so listen to that.
Speaker 5: But when commission came, it was like this is something new.
Speaker 5: All my musician buddies at the time that grew up
Speaker 5: in the church were like, yo, if you you check
Speaker 5: this out. The very beginning of.
Speaker 1: Going on, it was like what is that?
Speaker 5: So it was like we had something, we had something
Speaker 5: cool to listen to, you know what I mean, something
Speaker 5: that was yeah, something that was.
Speaker 1: Explained to me.
Speaker 2: What year did gospel stop really let itself go of?
Speaker 2: Like the Gospel Quartet, Like when did gospel really let go?
Speaker 2: Because even now I collect, like I love collecting gospel
Speaker 2: records that will take that one secular song and turn
Speaker 2: it into a gospel song like Shalamar second time around,
Speaker 2: or you know there's a whispers and the beat goes
Speaker 2: on gospel version.
Speaker 1: There's a Lovely Day that's gospelized.
Speaker 2: You know, there's always that one token song where they
Speaker 2: like take a secular song and do it.
Speaker 1: But the rest of this stuff is like old time gospel.
Speaker 2: At what point in the gospel world do you not
Speaker 2: have to feel shame that you're making people dance and
Speaker 2: not playing the regular gospel time old time you.
Speaker 4: Brought the sunshine maybe right, I mean Clark.
Speaker 5: Sisters, Yeah, what the sunshine?
Speaker 1: I mean that was master Blast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's the first time in which, like.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you go back to Edward Hawker, edwind Hawkins,
Speaker 5: the Oh Happy Day too, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: So even then, like that's still gospel to me.
Speaker 2: But like, what's the point where, like you know, where
Speaker 2: you if you take the vocals away, it could be
Speaker 2: a secular song, Like at at what point does that happen?
Speaker 3: It really took hold with B B and CCS first,
Speaker 3: I owe you.
Speaker 1: Mean, yes, I got it right. I was thinking that,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want to say it out loud.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Fred. I'm thinking that's when it really took
Speaker 3: hold because the people didn't know if there was a
Speaker 3: love song album. Yeah, you know, and that's when it
Speaker 3: got popular to actually sing music. Steve Thomas was the
Speaker 3: was the producer at that time. He was a white
Speaker 3: girl with a lot of song in heaven.
Speaker 4: He did a lot of Vanessa Williams stuff too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, so that's what it really kicked in.
Speaker 2: So when you're playing in church, are there any elders
Speaker 2: ever giving you side eye? Like because even even mine,
Speaker 2: like I'm not, I didn't. I didn't come from the
Speaker 2: church per se, but I played drums at my church occasionally,
Speaker 2: so like you know, in eighty six eighty seven, you know,
Speaker 2: I might put a little bit of top Villain into
Speaker 2: whatever we're doing, or play like a run DMC break
Speaker 2: beat or whatever, and occasionally like an older uncle would
Speaker 2: give me that look like.
Speaker 1: I know what you're doing. You know you older people
Speaker 1: didn't know.
Speaker 2: When the kids start on the wop, then they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're playing.
Speaker 1: Secondly, you don't do that like UPLIFD.
Speaker 2: So are you at all ever getting like side eyes
Speaker 2: if you start referencing a popular baseline, if you start
Speaker 2: doing not just neeedep or something like in your music.
Speaker 3: Man, we caught the blues with that. Man, we caught
Speaker 3: the blues with that. We were getting. Man, we got picketed.
Speaker 3: We got picket at the show. Wait. I wasn't expecting
Speaker 3: that commission. We were doing a we were doing a
Speaker 3: convention in Kentucky, I believe Cincinnati, Kentucky, and man, there
Speaker 3: was they said, Man, we don't want to we don't
Speaker 3: want to bum you out. But there's a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of people, about twenty to thirty people out in the front,
Speaker 3: and they got picket signs saying this music is gonna
Speaker 3: send you to hell. Oh and I never forgot. I
Speaker 3: never forgot. It was like a scene out of a movie.
Speaker 3: Driving up all of a sudden, we in slow motion.
Speaker 3: You hear some strings playing and you see these people. God,
Speaker 3: Devil's music, Devil's really and were just sitting there there
Speaker 3: like what are you doing? But it was still a
Speaker 3: line of young people waiting to get in. And when
Speaker 3: we got inside, we played like never before. We weren't
Speaker 3: really rebellious. We were kind of hurt because we didn't
Speaker 3: see that like that, but we played anyway, and the
Speaker 3: kids came in there and they had a great time,
Speaker 3: and we did have a lot of elders. And people say,
Speaker 3: I don't understand it. Like one pastor was totally against us,
Speaker 3: and the only reason he stopped being totally against us
Speaker 3: is that another pastor had a son that was on
Speaker 3: drugs that was getting clean because he was listening to
Speaker 3: our music and he would come to church. He said,
Speaker 3: I don't know what them boys are doing, but I
Speaker 3: tell you this, if they can get him to do
Speaker 3: his job, I ain't mad at it. And it started
Speaker 3: changing some people around, but it took a long time.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: People was picking in us because we had on blue jeans.
Speaker 3: We were the first group to ever wear blue jeans
Speaker 3: on a record, so we was like new addition, and
Speaker 3: people just thought people wouldn't buy a record because of
Speaker 3: what we had on that first open they wouldn't even
Speaker 3: buy it.
Speaker 4: What y'all think the church is keeping is catching up
Speaker 4: yet now they.
Speaker 3: Okay, everybody, everybody ain't in though.
Speaker 1: That's why I was asking.
Speaker 3: Churches in the Potter's house. We have we have dance ministries,
Speaker 3: we have youth ministries, and they could do whatever it
Speaker 3: is as long as it's not sexual looking. They can
Speaker 3: do any dance. They can whoa, they can do whatever
Speaker 3: they want to do to anything. Because he encourages, Man,
Speaker 3: this is current, this is what we're doing. This is
Speaker 3: nothing wrong with this. We we better offer them something.
Speaker 3: Somebody else is gonna offer him something. I want to
Speaker 3: give her something because if they're gonna the pole is
Speaker 3: gonna offer her something. So you know, let's be smart
Speaker 3: about these young people. And they're they're with it now.
Speaker 3: But coming up, man, Eric Robertson is one of my
Speaker 3: best friends.
Speaker 1: I want tenors.
Speaker 3: Yes, so he I never forget. They told me they
Speaker 3: said they brought him down to Popados and they said
Speaker 3: they had a special guest for his birthday, and they
Speaker 3: brought me in the room. He literally started crying and
Speaker 3: we stayed friends ever since. But he told the story
Speaker 3: that really blessed me. He said he hated gospel music
Speaker 3: because it was he didn't like it, and his mother said,
Speaker 3: you got to listen to it, but she was praying
Speaker 3: for something. So one day he was downstairs ironing his
Speaker 3: clothes and his mother put our record on the on
Speaker 3: the iron board and he saw that we had closed
Speaker 3: with like he did, and he looked at it and
Speaker 3: he played it. He said, I literally started crying. He said,
Speaker 3: because you guys, you said it. You guys made it
Speaker 3: cool to do gospels. And that's when the clipped. He
Speaker 3: and I talked about to this day. That's my guy
Speaker 3: good Eric's man. That's coming soon, the quest Love Spring.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm I'm mind blowing. I wasn't expecting the picketting.
Speaker 2: I thought, like, you guys broke through the other side
Speaker 2: and everyone was with it. So it's basically like the
Speaker 2: black footloose, Like.
Speaker 4: It's always a chicken with a skirt underneath the knees
Speaker 4: ready to pick it.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, black footloose.
Speaker 2: Well, I also want to know has there ever been
Speaker 2: musically speaking, how how long would you guys rehearse? And
Speaker 2: you know, was there ever a pressure to top yourselves
Speaker 2: as far as the musicality because you know, again some
Speaker 2: of these songs are straight a hit funk songs. But
Speaker 2: then like you guys will get on your return to Forever,
Speaker 2: you know, crazy arrangements at the end thing and you know,
Speaker 2: so how how how what's the what's the regiment for?
Speaker 2: Like practicing and coming up with new ideas and whatnot.
Speaker 3: There was a point in two when we were doing
Speaker 3: the first several set of records, when our budgets were really,
Speaker 3: really small. What we would do is put twenty hours
Speaker 3: of practice time in a basement to every four hours
Speaker 3: of studio time because we didn't have much money.
Speaker 4: So you're in the studio, you can knock it out.
Speaker 3: We knocking it out. And then we was putting fines
Speaker 3: in place. We ain't had no money, but we was
Speaker 3: putting fines in place. You know, if you miss it,
Speaker 3: if you because you had to do a take, you
Speaker 3: got one tape because we was like, no, we're going
Speaker 3: to be doing this in one take. If you mess
Speaker 3: it up, man, that's a five dollar fine, you know,
Speaker 3: And so the next one we would honestly, but we
Speaker 3: were on it man, because we would and we loved rehearsing.
Speaker 3: We didn't really have no jobs, so we loved rehearsing man,
Speaker 3: and we just saw ourselves in a bit of better place.
Speaker 3: So we would either be a Michael Brooks's basement, and
Speaker 3: we were learning. That's where I brought it in Field College.
Speaker 3: You know, if you go listen to Hide the word
Speaker 3: on the second album, Okay, but the drummer, I listened
Speaker 3: to Level forty two and I listened to Phil Collins
Speaker 3: and them, and uh my drummer was crazy about Phil Collins.
Speaker 3: So we said, we're gonna put this one party in
Speaker 3: there that Phil does his times all right, So it
Speaker 3: said when it looks like thing, you rob boom, and
Speaker 3: they didn't think instant he would go past the one,
Speaker 3: so he goes problem instead of going bot, instead of
Speaker 3: going to the one he would go he said, watch,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna do this. Boo boo boo, boom stop boom,
Speaker 3: and and we went into a thing. But we he
Speaker 3: would do something, then I would do something, or Mark
Speaker 3: King would do this right here boom boom boom, and
Speaker 3: this would never do well, Let's do this right here.
Speaker 3: We were blessed to experiment with music and still keep
Speaker 3: a pocket. That was the beauty of commission. Man, that's
Speaker 3: what I love. Wow.
Speaker 1: Wow, you mentioned level forty two.
Speaker 2: I was about to say, what's his name is Basse
Speaker 2: playing marking?
Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, I definitely see that. Yeah, Erro.
Speaker 4: He wanted to he wanted to ask you what I
Speaker 4: wanted you to tell the story of recording, writing and
Speaker 4: recording and running back to you.
Speaker 3: Oh man, it was funny because that's actually just came
Speaker 3: up about three years ago as a sore spot just
Speaker 3: came up. And sore spot.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: It was supposed to be in a little movie thing
Speaker 3: we was talking about doing. And I won't blow people's cover,
Speaker 3: but I'll just tell you what happened. We were in
Speaker 3: there and this record we had a we had an
Speaker 3: artist named Derek Brinkley, you know, and I was going
Speaker 3: to give this song to him, and they said, well, no,
Speaker 3: why don't you keep it? So I said to Keith,
Speaker 3: I said, because it's my personal testimony. And I said, Keith, Man,
Speaker 3: why don't you sing the song? Because we always wanted
Speaker 3: to make sure everybody felt more comfortable, you know, like
Speaker 3: I don't want to seem like I'm doing everything. So
Speaker 3: I wrote this song, you know, and I said, Keith,
Speaker 3: would you do it? Keith is more straight lace of
Speaker 3: all of us. He was very much the straight lace guy,
Speaker 3: you know, very cool. But he went out there in
Speaker 3: these streets like we was. We was out there and
Speaker 3: he said, man, I'm not real comfortable with doing that song.
Speaker 3: I said, well, I'll go do the demo of it,
Speaker 3: and you guys kind of listened to it. So what
Speaker 3: we would do is I the person, would sing the lead,
Speaker 3: and then we go start making the background parts. So
Speaker 3: I went in there and I sang the song, and
Speaker 3: I'm looking at the guys in there, and They're just
Speaker 3: kind of sitting like this, you know, and and so
Speaker 3: I'm singing the parts and singing the parts, and finally
Speaker 3: I put I look in there after I finished, and
Speaker 3: I put the headphones down, and nobody's, you know, saying, man,
Speaker 3: great songs that they just sitting me. And so I
Speaker 3: walked from the microphone to the studio ten feet going
Speaker 3: past double doors. And when I got in there, everybody
Speaker 3: was looking at me like this, and I didn't know
Speaker 3: what to expect. So I just sat down and one
Speaker 3: of the guys said, good job, man, good job, and
Speaker 3: I said, okay, cool. So I'm listening to the playback
Speaker 3: and I turned around to the guys and said, so, guys,
Speaker 3: let's start putting some backgrounds to it. Let's put some
Speaker 3: backgrounds to it. And the guy said, I don't think
Speaker 3: you should put no backgrounds. Here's here's the dirt. There's
Speaker 3: a little dirt. One of the guys, when I was
Speaker 3: coming from the vocal booth to the room, said so
Speaker 3: they all gonna just let him do a solo on this.
Speaker 1: Record, ah man.
Speaker 3: And when I got in there, everybody was off guard.
Speaker 3: So that was the look. That was the look. And
Speaker 3: so the rest of the guys told me this literally
Speaker 3: three years ago. Wowa. What they just told me this
Speaker 3: three years ago? Wow? And so when I walked in
Speaker 3: the room, I walked in and the person said, hey, man,
Speaker 3: you should just go ahead and do it yourself. And
Speaker 3: I said, no, man, I don't want nobody thinking I'm
Speaker 3: trying to do no no solo or nothing like that.
Speaker 3: They said, Manna, you're good. The guys were trying to
Speaker 3: process what they just dealt with.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: So they sat there and what you hear is the
Speaker 3: demo is the actual song itself. Today.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: We were still here's the thing. We were still regular dudes.
Speaker 3: We were still people with insecurities. We were people. We
Speaker 3: were guys, boys trying to be raising, trying to turn
Speaker 3: into men. We had idiosyncrasies, we had group issues. So
Speaker 3: when I see something like The Temptation Story, which is
Speaker 3: one of my favorite movies of all time, you know,
Speaker 3: I feel that pain. When I see that fire heart beats,
Speaker 3: I feel that pain. When I see the Jackson's I
Speaker 3: see a new addition. Man, we all went through that.
Speaker 3: It's nothing different in gospel. People have desires and this,
Speaker 3: that and the other. We just didn't cuss each other
Speaker 3: a fight, but man, it was still the same drama,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, And that was one of
Speaker 3: them moments.
Speaker 2: Well, James and I are from the Tri State area,
Speaker 2: so the gospel station I always listened to my parents
Speaker 2: went full Christian on me, like around mid eighties, and
Speaker 2: there was a station called WZZB, of which.
Speaker 1: You know, you can hear some whinings.
Speaker 2: But then it would be like the people today, Sandy Patty,
Speaker 2: Michael W. Smith or you know, yeah, all those groups
Speaker 2: Twilight Paris. Like, were you guys ever accepted in the
Speaker 2: sort of white man extreme contemporary Christian set or were
Speaker 2: you guys strictly just like on your side of the fence,
Speaker 2: or you know, was there mixing, you know, would they
Speaker 2: have not on festivals?
Speaker 1: Or churches would invite you guys or like brilliant question.
Speaker 3: We did have a few churches. So if we did
Speaker 3: thirty gigs a year, you know, two of them would
Speaker 3: be a white church or a big white festival, you know,
Speaker 3: a big white festival. The guy that brought Amy Grant
Speaker 3: and Michael W. Smith to town, his name was Art.
Speaker 3: He would try to get us in events because he
Speaker 3: was just a really good friend in him and Derek Dirkson.
Speaker 3: Derek was trying to cross us over to let people
Speaker 3: see what we did. But we didn't do a lot
Speaker 3: of them, but we had enough. You know festivals. Festivals
Speaker 3: were big back then, so we would go on stage,
Speaker 3: you know, right before Petra or right before you know striper, you.
Speaker 1: Know, would he try to kill him? Would try to
Speaker 1: kill him?
Speaker 3: We was I think I saw a picture the other
Speaker 3: day somebody sent me something. I'm probably post it in
Speaker 3: a day or so where we were doing the monument
Speaker 3: watch it's called I forgot what it was called. But
Speaker 3: it was a big freedom fest and it's one of
Speaker 3: the largest white festivals around and they brought us there.
Speaker 3: It looks like the crowd is sitting on us because
Speaker 3: we were singing. That's when Marvin Sap was in the group.
Speaker 3: He had just got in the group. But the reality
Speaker 3: was it was one hundred and eighteen degrees and people
Speaker 3: were falling out. They told everybody sit down for every group,
Speaker 3: no matter who it was, because people were falling out
Speaker 3: and they was taking people away and it had to
Speaker 3: be like the mall was filled. So it probably was
Speaker 3: about thirty thousand people on the lawn, you know. So
Speaker 3: you know, I just saw that the other day and
Speaker 3: I'm probably posted in a day or so. But yeah,
Speaker 3: we had a decent fear, but we basically stayed on
Speaker 3: our side the fence.
Speaker 2: I want to get to his last down with Commission
Speaker 2: at least to see what the difference and starting the
Speaker 2: band ten years ago in eighty four eighty five, and
Speaker 2: what prompted to the initial split from the group in
Speaker 2: ninety four with Matters of the Heart.
Speaker 1: Could you just talk about the time period.
Speaker 3: The first record after the split was Number seven. That
Speaker 3: was the first record. Okay. What ended up happening was
Speaker 3: Michael Brooks ended up getting a really good deal with
Speaker 3: PolyGram Raina Bundy and PolyGram in New York, and she
Speaker 3: made him her staff producer, and you know, he was
Speaker 3: kind of a and R director and he was still
Speaker 3: with us, but he was really really busy doing that,
Speaker 3: and he reached out to Keith and said, hey, man,
Speaker 3: we'll do a solo record on you. And Benson Records
Speaker 3: passed on Keith's solo deal. They gave him an option
Speaker 3: to do it. They said, no, we invested in commission.
Speaker 3: We don't think you should be doing that. Well, we
Speaker 3: had something in our contract to say first right and refusal.
Speaker 3: If you pass, it's hit. Well, Keith went on ahead
Speaker 3: and signed with Brooks under his production company with Rayner
Speaker 3: PolyGram and it's called Election Records was the name of
Speaker 3: the record company they ended up. Benson got really mad.
Speaker 3: Benson Records got really mad. So they came to me
Speaker 3: and said, he can't stay in this group. If this
Speaker 3: is gonna happen, y'all need to get him out, and this,
Speaker 3: that and the other. So the record company basically made
Speaker 3: us split and said, well, man, you can't be a
Speaker 3: part of us if you going to do that, And
Speaker 3: so him and Mike went their way. So now the
Speaker 3: whole record from number seven and then Matters of the
Speaker 3: Heart is all in my hands to produce. And I
Speaker 3: brought Mitchell on because that was my boy, and he
Speaker 3: had Mitchell had an amazing sound. He understood, you know, flavor.
Speaker 3: He understood he had a flavor too, So that I'm
Speaker 3: learning that's Mitchell and Parks, but that's our groove behind it.
Speaker 3: But that's their pin, you know. Ordinary just won't do
Speaker 3: Mitchell and Parks some of the greatest songs they had,
Speaker 3: they just had that that thing, but we had the
Speaker 3: music behind So number seven, you know, I brought in
Speaker 3: my boy Bernard, right, we did King of Glory, we
Speaker 3: did I Can't Live Without You.
Speaker 1: And yes, yes.
Speaker 3: He stayed with me, hung out with me, and me
Speaker 3: and him was like that and he so if you
Speaker 3: listen to King of Glory, you will hear me and Banar,
Speaker 3: you know. And then you listen to I Can't Live
Speaker 3: Without You, you hear me and Banard, my first solo record.
Speaker 3: I came to Jesus with the flying bannbro Me and
Speaker 3: Banar grace for me every day, Me and Banar. And
Speaker 3: then Bernard went and got his record deal from another
Speaker 3: record company and he moved on. So that was what
Speaker 3: that was, so our sound. I was able to take
Speaker 3: the funk that was always in me and drive it
Speaker 3: and said, this is what we're gonna do. And then
Speaker 3: we got to uh, we got a little bit more
Speaker 3: polished because we were we got to matters of the
Speaker 3: heart and we wanted to sound a little older. So
Speaker 3: then I got with my boy Chucky Booker, and we
Speaker 3: did you know, love is the Way, and we did
Speaker 3: you can always come Home with run DMC, and we
Speaker 3: just we experimented with great music. So we had CCM sound,
Speaker 3: we had that funk Chucky Booker sound, and then we
Speaker 3: had that commission funk in the middle of there something.
Speaker 3: So that was kind of how that was birthed. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that was my last record. That was my last record.
Speaker 4: And then after that, that was when you did Radicals
Speaker 4: for Christ for Christ my last record.
Speaker 3: And we had another split at that point in time,
Speaker 3: and really and I thought, I was I was gonna
Speaker 3: get rid of the other guys and we're gonna be me.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm I'm being good with the record company,
Speaker 3: and you know, it is what it is. Which one
Speaker 3: of you was going, I'm not leaving you I've already
Speaker 3: proven myself. I'm the golden job. They loved the records
Speaker 3: it's selling. And we had a meeting one time and
Speaker 3: they said this. They brought a lot of different things
Speaker 3: that wasn't true. And we sat down with a pastor
Speaker 3: and I'm like, okay, one of you, somebody's leaving. It
Speaker 3: ain't gonna be me. We hear no, I'm not moving.
Speaker 3: And somebody read I won't say which one it was.
Speaker 3: He said, read the bottom line. And he said, because
Speaker 3: the pastor said, I don't see anything wrong here. There's
Speaker 3: nothing out of order to seat her in place. Everything
Speaker 3: that you guys are saying, I don't see it. What's
Speaker 3: the bottom line? And he said, we do not believe.
Speaker 3: God called Fred to be the leader of our group.
Speaker 3: And it took all the air out of me because
Speaker 3: I picked. I handpicked the guy that was reading it.
Speaker 3: And I sat back in my chair and I went
Speaker 3: through all the emotions right there, and then I told
Speaker 3: I said give me a week, and I went back
Speaker 3: to my little spot, my little student, and I went
Speaker 3: to everywhere in the Bible in the New Testament that
Speaker 3: talked about belief, and the main scripture was Jesus was
Speaker 3: in his own town, preaching to his own people, and
Speaker 3: they said, who does this guy think he is? Don't
Speaker 3: we know his sisters and them? Who you think? Where
Speaker 3: do you get all this knowledge from? And he said
Speaker 3: he marveled at their unbelief. And then this was the
Speaker 3: thing that made me give it up. He said, many
Speaker 3: mighty miracles he could not do because of their unbelief.
Speaker 3: And I closed the Bible. I said, I can get
Speaker 3: these guys ten Grammys. They all have Rose Royce's Mentley's
Speaker 3: and they won't believe it's me. So I'm out. And
Speaker 3: I just handed everything over. I said, y'all can have it,
Speaker 3: and I went into a wilderness. I did not know
Speaker 3: what I was going to do. I went into a depression.
Speaker 3: We sang one more year, and then I had to
Speaker 3: figure out what I was going to do.
Speaker 4: And this is ninety ninety four.
Speaker 3: And that's when I heard started a choir, and I
Speaker 3: was like, now I'm gonna keep it one hundred, you know,
Speaker 3: and I don't, you know, only I gotta keep it
Speaker 3: careful because I don't want to get canceled. You know.
Speaker 3: I didn't care for choirs for the persona that it
Speaker 3: carried At the time, and that's what's all I'm gonna
Speaker 3: tell you, dude, you know, and I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 3: care for it, you know. I didn't care for what
Speaker 3: people looked at choirs. And I saw Kirk on a show,
Speaker 3: and I saw David Man. I saw a big day Dalen,
Speaker 3: Uh my boy, Dalen, I saw and they was with it.
Speaker 3: And so then I knew John p Key. So I
Speaker 3: started listening to John. And John was thugging. I knew
Speaker 3: John me I helped him get his first deal, and
Speaker 3: so I started listening. I started listening to show up
Speaker 3: like for four months straight, and I'm hearing this hard
Speaker 3: driving thing, and I'm like, I can do this. I
Speaker 3: can do this. So I was friends with Billy Steele,
Speaker 3: so I paid attention to sounds of blackness because at
Speaker 3: that point, uh, Jimmy Terry just killed the game, which
Speaker 3: sounds of blackness. So I'm seeing this transformation and I'm
Speaker 3: going into it, and I finally I come up with
Speaker 3: r f C. I said, this is gonna be our flavor.
Speaker 3: We're gonna do this. We're gonna do praising worship. And
Speaker 3: nobody knew what praising worship was at that time. Praising
Speaker 3: worship is just how you say the lyrics you're saying.
Speaker 3: So when people are saying I've been down, boom and
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get back up, they were singing where they
Speaker 3: were in life. They were singing, baby, got need a
Speaker 3: pair of shoes, even got a light built do Because
Speaker 3: this is my problem. I'm gonna turn over the Lord.
Speaker 3: He'll work it out. But I started lifting the Lord up.
Speaker 3: So I'm doing this beat, and I got my MPC
Speaker 3: and I got all my cards and load the samples
Speaker 3: up and I'm doing this one beat boom stop boom,
Speaker 3: boomtop boom boom, and I stopped the sample. And you
Speaker 3: know how an NBC the sample would go over.
Speaker 1: Shot?
Speaker 3: Did you hit it again? To do shop, to read,
Speaker 3: to read too glow? And that's how it started. Wow,
Speaker 3: it changed into a whole thing, you know. So I
Speaker 3: just took praise and worship that white people were doing,
Speaker 3: brought it over to the Black church. And I told
Speaker 3: I tell white people and says, you guys cook string
Speaker 3: beans and it still has a snap in it. We
Speaker 3: don't like that. Like our stuff to be all those bread.
Speaker 3: It needs to be wilted, turkey leg in there, and
Speaker 3: it needs to have not a nutrient around, taste a rival.
Speaker 3: I don't want to taste I'll see none of that fiber. This,
Speaker 3: this shouldn't be no good. So that's what my praise
Speaker 3: of worship was. It was we just took their stuff
Speaker 3: that was neat and we just put some turkey leg
Speaker 3: in there.
Speaker 2: It was such an education, especially in watching with you
Speaker 2: and Kirk doing versus together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and going through you know, going through your history.
Speaker 2: How does it feel where now like contemporary sycul acts
Speaker 2: be it Diddy Snoo Dogg did a gospel record, like,
Speaker 2: how does it feel to be embraced by that community
Speaker 2: to whom that you know, maybe ten twenty years ago,
Speaker 2: I think maybe the most radical thing I saw thirty
Speaker 2: forty years ago was maybe like Marie White singing with
Speaker 2: a gospel act. But you know, now it's very commonplace,
Speaker 2: Like how does it feel to get embraced by.
Speaker 1: The world?
Speaker 3: Respect feels good. Respect just feels good. And that's all
Speaker 3: we ever wanted was respect, you know, to be treated
Speaker 3: like we're real musicians. We're not church musicians. We're real
Speaker 3: musicians who made a choice to sing church stuff. And
Speaker 3: now that's what it is. So I can look at you.
Speaker 3: I can look at the roots. I can pay attention.
Speaker 3: I watched you know, you guys. I remember when you
Speaker 3: guys went on and got the gig we all talked about.
Speaker 3: That was stuff about that we talked about. I paid
Speaker 3: attention to the sound that came out of Philadelphia music,
Speaker 3: soul childs. Now we just embraced each other because you know,
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, each every one of
Speaker 3: us on here, our brothers and sisters, we're a family
Speaker 3: of music. First what we talk about, but it's hip
Speaker 3: hop gos. That's just something we choose to have a
Speaker 3: conversation about. But first and foremost, we all have the
Speaker 3: passion of the beat, the drum, the bass, the keys,
Speaker 3: the sound, the lyric And now we can have those
Speaker 3: conversations with each other and we respect them. Like I said,
Speaker 3: my brother, we're in here right now preparing for Ricky, Bobby, Rod,
Speaker 3: Johnny and Mike were preparing for them right now. All
Speaker 3: of our gear is getting ready to go out. And
Speaker 3: when I go and see them, I love them and
Speaker 3: we just we hug up, we dap up, and we
Speaker 3: just respect each other. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I really can't wait for this.
Speaker 2: For me, This education is important because you know, James, James.
Speaker 1: Gonna attest to this.
Speaker 2: Especially in the last two years, I've been like really
Speaker 2: catching up on a lot of things that I've missed
Speaker 2: and wasn't able. You know, like the quarantine period that
Speaker 2: we're now is a slow down period where you know,
Speaker 2: we get time to ourselves and really I get to
Speaker 2: catch up on books and things and music that I
Speaker 2: otherwise wouldn't have caught up on because I'm working so much.
Speaker 2: And I was, you know when when Laias said that
Speaker 2: you wanted to do Quest Love Supreme, I was, you know,
Speaker 2: I I thank God because I didn't want to be
Speaker 2: the only person in life who listened to Crash Cuts
Speaker 2: more than I've listened to.
Speaker 3: You know, man cut Man happening to do Yeah today
Speaker 3: my birthday.
Speaker 1: So I thank you for this, man, you know, I
Speaker 1: truly thank you.
Speaker 2: Almost in closing, I just want to know, well, in
Speaker 2: the aftermath of the pandemic, how has your life changed
Speaker 2: and how has the circuit, at least your life of
Speaker 2: music changed since March of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Because he's about to go on tour allegedly.
Speaker 3: Yeah We're about to do has A Kira, who was
Speaker 3: one of my best but good friends. We're hitting the roads,
Speaker 3: k marvels at myself, Israel Holden, hitting the road, March Festival,
Speaker 3: the praise to it. But you know what, man, it's
Speaker 3: weird because streaming has killed us. Streaming really has it
Speaker 3: the church. I mean, here's the thing. Our people are
Speaker 3: just starting to get on streaming this year.
Speaker 4: They're just starting no, no, no, he's saying the yeah.
Speaker 3: Because that's why choice. So they couldn't go nowhere listening,
Speaker 3: so on their refrigerators, on their computers listening. They discovered Pandora,
Speaker 3: they discovered Spotify, you know what I'm saying. So they're
Speaker 3: they're listening. Now. Here's the thing. It's kind of a
Speaker 3: cruel joke. And it's not God's fault, but it feels
Speaker 3: like a cruel joke because I still have so much
Speaker 3: music in me to create, but there's no real outlet.
Speaker 3: Like I just did a record, man, I just did
Speaker 3: a record with this was this company called Fennis and
Speaker 3: I put it out. It's called Sunday Morning Fred and
Speaker 3: it's it's on Apple Music right now. But and it's
Speaker 3: one of the leading black streaming records out there. And
Speaker 3: I'm not on a major label. But it's not saying
Speaker 3: nothing because I'm streaming like seven thousand, like thirty six
Speaker 3: thousand copies of week streams a week on this new record,
Speaker 3: and that's not really that good. It's not really financially
Speaker 3: is like man, I put a lot of money into
Speaker 3: it to make it happen. And so on my Facebook page,
Speaker 3: I got a whole I got the whole concert. I
Speaker 3: got the whole concert. I did it in my warehouse.
Speaker 3: And it's a throwback of old Fred. It's pages is
Speaker 3: the life for it. It's that vibe and a man.
Speaker 3: Gospel is in a tunnel because R and B died.
Speaker 3: And I tell everybody that when R and B die,
Speaker 3: I'm talking about LTD, I'm talking about time. I'm talking
Speaker 3: about Anita and Luthor. When we could listen to them,
Speaker 3: we were What made commission happen is because you can
Speaker 3: listen to something like like you said, man, your father said,
Speaker 3: you can listen to them. And we gave you the time,
Speaker 3: We gave you some prince, We gave you these people
Speaker 3: because we had something to lean on. Well, now those
Speaker 3: people are gone, that that music is gone. It's nothing
Speaker 3: new coming out therefore, and gospel has gone back to
Speaker 3: traditional or to Maverick. Maverick is the white version of
Speaker 3: Black gospel and sabric City. Maverick City is the new
Speaker 3: praise of worship. It's the hot It's the hottest praise
Speaker 3: of worship company out there lives. And when I tell you,
Speaker 3: they got some amazing artists. But what it is is
Speaker 3: a lot of the young people now have gone over
Speaker 3: there and they've taken the sound of black music and
Speaker 3: they've made it less black. Okay, you have to go
Speaker 3: research it. I tell you it's people like chander More.
Speaker 3: I mean, I tell you, this guy is amazing. But
Speaker 3: what they're doing is they're creating a new space for
Speaker 3: these guys to write and to do their things. So
Speaker 3: I can't be mad at I'm never gonna be mad
Speaker 3: at somebody doing their thing. Maverick is the hottest thing
Speaker 3: going Maverick City. But I can do Maverick because I'm too.
Speaker 3: I'm too so I don't have that thing, and uh man,
Speaker 3: check it out, check it out.
Speaker 1: So you're saying, right now, there's really not there's really
Speaker 1: not a space.
Speaker 2: For you to be creative and release product and have
Speaker 2: it be monetarily worth it. So would you Fante say
Speaker 2: the sort of where you were in like two thousand
Speaker 2: and three, like trying to figure out where he's saying,
Speaker 2: this is where you were in two thousand and three,
Speaker 2: like when you start a little brother and try to
Speaker 2: figure out I mean now, I would assume now in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, twenty years later, the lame that you're
Speaker 2: in is rather lucrative.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, yeah, now it makes sense.
Speaker 3: But at the time, the beauty of what I did
Speaker 3: that a lot of my counterparts didn't do back in
Speaker 3: the commission days is I really felt God told me
Speaker 3: to just keep putting music out, even though I wasn't
Speaker 3: in the best record company position, even though they were
Speaker 3: making the money and I wasn't. I kept hearing them saying,
Speaker 3: just keep putting music out, keep putting it out, and
Speaker 3: my guys were saying, rightfully, I'm not gonna let them
Speaker 3: pip me. I'm out the game before you pit me.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna lead. But I kept making the music. Now
Speaker 3: my catalog is what it is Spotify. I did twenty
Speaker 3: two million streams this year. That's Spotify alone, Pandora plus
Speaker 3: this plus that, and my catalog is burning through like crazy.
Speaker 3: So people want to keep me where they met me. Though,
Speaker 3: I don't want you to evolve. They don't want you
Speaker 3: to like I've reached Frankie Beverley's status, retreated, I receive.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna make you know. I'm gonna make I will
Speaker 4: make a suggestion. I'm putting this out this on q les.
Speaker 4: I'm saying this. This needs to happen because I think
Speaker 4: I think I see a lame for you, brother, Fred,
Speaker 4: if I may, if I okay, listen, this is the
Speaker 4: same thing that you know that Rick James did. Like
Speaker 4: when you have the veteran act being produced by the
Speaker 4: younger producers. So Rick James when he produced The Temptations
Speaker 4: a mirror when he produced Al Green.
Speaker 1: I think your next James as absolutely yeah, both of
Speaker 1: y'all y'all did Al Green.
Speaker 4: I think your next project, Fred, I think you should
Speaker 4: be produced by Devin Morrison. Oh, like when I'm talking
Speaker 4: about I don't know if you know him. I don't
Speaker 4: know if you're knowing, But Devin Morris is a singer.
Speaker 4: He's a singer producer out of He's from out of Florida,
Speaker 4: but he's based in I think La now, Devin is
Speaker 4: when I tell you a student of commission. When I
Speaker 4: when I found out you were coming on the show,
Speaker 4: I reached out to him. I was like, Devin, like,
Speaker 4: I know commission, but like I'm not I'm not a
Speaker 4: church dude, so I need.
Speaker 1: To know you know what I mean. He made me a.
Speaker 4: Playlist of like his favorite jokes. He was like, all right,
Speaker 4: this is what you need. These are the joints, these
Speaker 4: are the producers, like he knows your whole thing, and
Speaker 4: ye'all said, I'll see you the playlist. And when I
Speaker 4: listened to the playlist, I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 4: this is Devin's DNA, Like this is he is a
Speaker 4: student and a student of your music and loves you, bro,
Speaker 4: like I think y'all can kill something like for real.
Speaker 3: That's the beauty of it to work with my newest
Speaker 3: these young cats. I love working with him, you know,
Speaker 3: I love working with him. So I'm down, man.
Speaker 4: I will link y'all up, straight up and down like Batmans.
Speaker 3: Happened sometimes.
Speaker 1: Wait, James, is there anything right?
Speaker 5: Weave heavens over here, so you know, man, it's it's
Speaker 5: it's just so much music. I just got to tell
Speaker 5: you how much of an influence you've had on my
Speaker 5: life musically, and I just want to thank you for that.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you remember we met my brother
Speaker 5: Marvin mcquittie introduced us when you came to Philly. This
Speaker 5: is this is just back rest in peace my brother.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: But just I just I just got to say thank
Speaker 5: you man, thank you for the music, thank you for
Speaker 5: for who you are.
Speaker 4: That's all right up and down for real, for real.
Speaker 3: I appreciate you all, and I this night was special
Speaker 3: to me. I have not done a zoom this long listen.
Speaker 3: I would have been checked out the whole long time
Speaker 3: ago because I'll be okay, we just talked about everything else.
Speaker 3: But when you get into the history and you get
Speaker 3: into the music cology of it all, Man, you guys
Speaker 3: are amazing. Tonight was amazing. Quest Man, you don't understand.
Speaker 3: I really am a fan and I am a fan.
Speaker 2: I really thank you and I received that. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for for doing this for us. I really
Speaker 2: appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Thank you Nah for yo real quick, Fred, do I
Speaker 4: have do I have permission? Can I get your number
Speaker 4: from errow and I'll link you? Okay, I'll do that.
Speaker 3: Quest. I don't mess with people when I go places.
Speaker 3: If they don't really recognize me. I'm the kind of
Speaker 3: person that are staying with my family. And I'm cool,
Speaker 3: you know, because sometimes you meet a start and they
Speaker 3: don't know you today, they know you tomorrow. They know
Speaker 3: you when you ain't in front of people, and I
Speaker 3: don't know other people. You and I met one time.
Speaker 3: Oh no, we were no, no, no, it wasn't bad.
Speaker 3: It was the Grammys. We was at the Grammys and
Speaker 3: I was behind you. Was in l A and I
Speaker 3: was behind you, and somebody was kind of they were
Speaker 3: they were like messing with your tickets or something, you know,
Speaker 3: And it was you and your mom you a were together,
Speaker 3: and so I said, hey, hey, bro, you're good. And
Speaker 3: you turned around and said hold on second, man, And
Speaker 3: and so the girl I was with was like, don't bother,
Speaker 3: don't I said, I think he's having some problems up there.
Speaker 3: And I said, I'm I believe in him enough to
Speaker 3: try one more time. You got free and I got free.
Speaker 3: I walked up to you and I said, hey, man,
Speaker 3: I just want to tell you I'm a fan. My
Speaker 3: name is fred HAMMT And man, you embraced me with
Speaker 3: the biggest hull.
Speaker 1: You said the name he look.
Speaker 3: Went. It was always like snap, oh yeah, okay, he said,
Speaker 3: and he said, this is my mom and we hugged
Speaker 3: and this that and other we talked and that, yeah,
Speaker 3: did induce you to the person I was with. And man,
Speaker 3: that that made my day because I didn't really walk
Speaker 3: up to a whole bunch of people that night. I'm
Speaker 3: not that dude to walk up and so yo ho,
Speaker 3: what's that? Man? You don't know me. I don't know you.
Speaker 3: That's right, But man, you were too close. We were
Speaker 3: in the tunnel on our way. You were too close
Speaker 3: for me not to say something. His quests love man,
Speaker 3: I'm like, man, let me just talk to my man
Speaker 3: for a minute. It was nervous that first one, like
Speaker 3: a willow tree was growing over because shade was brother.
Speaker 2: I didn't get you on site, but definitely your name
Speaker 2: holds holy because if there's anyone who made me go
Speaker 2: in the basement and rehearse endlessly to keep up with
Speaker 2: the cats that was listening to Commission, it was you.
Speaker 5: You.
Speaker 3: Thank you you.
Speaker 2: And you know I kept it to my dad like
Speaker 2: my dad make me go in the basement rehearse. But
Speaker 2: you know that was from like eight to thirteen.
Speaker 1: But definitely. Once I got to high school, you.
Speaker 2: Were definitely the spark that really really brought my musicianship out.
Speaker 1: Brother, and I thank you for that. Thank you.
Speaker 3: I'll say this and I'll be done. You guys, when
Speaker 3: you do stuff like this, you add validity to who
Speaker 3: we are as God's artists. You guys did something and
Speaker 3: y'all mentioned my name in the middle of one of
Speaker 3: these two three hour shows, and my people listen to it,
Speaker 3: and they my guy sent me about five people said yo, man,
Speaker 3: Chris Love said your name, but they talked about you,
Speaker 3: and they marked the spot go to this spot and
Speaker 3: you can hear it. And I did it and I
Speaker 3: said it there and man, it brought a smile to
Speaker 3: my face. It's not like somebody sent me something. They
Speaker 3: said and I said, oh yeah. When they sent it
Speaker 3: to me, I wanted to just know because of how
Speaker 3: I feel about you, I feel about your proof, how
Speaker 3: I feel about your accomplishments and everything that you guys
Speaker 3: are doing. I just wanted to hear that, and it
Speaker 3: was it was validation to me. It's a respect and
Speaker 3: you guys had such nice things to say. And whoever
Speaker 3: the guest was on that time, they were talking nice
Speaker 3: about it as well. So I just want to tell you, man,
Speaker 3: when you guys do this to us, it's a blessing. Man,
Speaker 3: trust me, we're listening.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Sugar, Steve about to win that, and and
Speaker 6: they and are important.
Speaker 1: And and paid Bill and our special guest.
Speaker 5: James James soon to come as a quest guests.
Speaker 2: The episode soon. Thank you so much for doing us
Speaker 2: for us and we appreciate it. This isus Love Love Supreme.
Speaker 2: We will see you on the next around.
Speaker 1: Thank you, West. Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.