Damon G. Riddick, aka DâM-FunK, is a modern funk producer and session musician from Los Angeles who stands as one of this generation's most vocal champions for funk music.
Ever the showman, his synthesizer-heavy live show and rare vinyl-heavy DJ sets have earned much acclaim from fans and critics -- pertinent information considering that he'll be gracing us us with the latter this evening at the impossibly swanky new Rio Room in uptown Dallas.
Earlier this week, I caught up with Riddick via Skype, as he revealed his heartfelt passion for funk and his philosophy toward music production, and even hinted at some future secret releases under unknown pseudonyms. Read our Q&A in full after the jump.
Is this set going to be similar to the one you played in Austin at Beauty Bar during Fun Fun Fun Fest? Like, with live keys?
Yeah, it's going to be like that, and it's going to have live keys.
I remember you playing unreleased tracks last time as well, is that going to happen here?
Yeah, I'm going to share some of the new stuff and preview some of the future album that's coming out.
When is that coming out?
I'm looking for a summer release, but I'm trying to turn it in by the end of March.
So when did you first start recording?
I started recording in high school, in like the 10th grade. But I was always
playing drums my whole life. In the 10th grade, I started recording on
cassette tapes at home. I'd leave school early and make these tracks
before people were even doing some of the recording in the way that they
do now, as far as Logic and Ableton and Pro Tools and all that stuff. It
was basically bouncing stuff back and forth from cassette tape to
cassette tape and it would have a lot of hiss on it, but it was still
listenable. I would just make those tapes for my friends in the
neighborhood, never intending to put them out and stuff, and I just
started progressing from there. After high school, I started hooking up
with people in the business, doing session work, and learning more about
music.
You worked at a record store, didn't you?
Yeah, I worked at a record store called Poo-Bah Records, and they're
pretty well-known now for being the instigators of a lot of the beat
music scene now, until the owners switched. When I was working there,
they were at another location, in Pasadena, and I was one of the first
young guys to work at Poo-Bah. That's where I learned a lot of my record
digging insights, by working at a record store like that that had a lot
of used records coming in.
That helped build up the collection that you have now, right?
I did get a lot of stuff from there, but I got it from all over the
place. Plus, I'd always been buying the type of music you hear me
spinning now -- I didn't just jump on it, I've been really enjoying this
type of sound. Not just funk, either. I like all types of different styles --
like, it'll be some Depeche Mode, Pre Fab Sprout, it'll be Frank Zappa,
it'll be Todd Rundgren, mixtures of genres of what my listening taste
was. But funk was always the thing that suited my appetite for good
music.
When did the DâM-FunK moniker come about?
It was in the 2000s -- the early 2000s. People were calling me DâM, short for
Damon, so I didn't want the "E" at the end because that's like a
female, "dame." I was always very in tune to how people perceive things,
so I started going by DâM, but I added the funk at the end because
that's the lifeline of my musical taste that I dig and everything that I
do. I want it to be funk-based and go into other areas of different
music, like how I do things with Animal Collective and Nite Jewel and
that kind of thing. The funk is the base, but I never want to stay
entrenched in it, so I just go experiment with other things. So DâM-FunK
is still going to be the moniker that I use, but there will probably be
some other pseudonyms down the road. There's already a couple now, but
people don't really know what it is yet.
You're keeping that on the down-low for a little bit?
Yeah, I hope people don't mind. I just want those to come out so I can
kind of, like, keep spreading the sound and make it a little bit more fun
and wonder who it is.
So the style that you developed under DâM-FunK is a specific style
you've cultivated, and you'll be going into different styles with these
different pseudonyms?
Yes.
On Toeachizown, how many different instruments did you play?
Mainly just keyboards and drums. I have been dabbling with bass, but
I want to save that to be the right way. I don't want to be one of
these cats that starts messing around and other bass players are like,
"Man what the fuck was that?" So I want it to be right when I do
introduce the bass playing on my records. So far, I'm just really into
synthesizers, keyboards a lot, drum machines and live drums. A track
called "New Frontiers" that was only available on the wax, I played drums
on that.
So in terms of synthesizers, how long have you been collecting gear?
A long time. I've been doing it since high school, going to pawn shops and,
y'know, recycler ads. I bought my first Linn Drum machine
for $200. You know those now are worth pretty much like a thousand on
up, so I just got it at a good time when people weren't "hipstering" out,
trying to get synths and everything. When I was using drum machines, it
wasn't cool, it was like jam bands were around and stuff like that. But,
now, even the jam bands are using drum machines. But, y'know. I've just
always been true, Rodrigo, and I was doing stuff before it was a fad. So
it just happened to be, with meeting people like Peanut Butter Wolf
from Stones Throw [Records], it just connected where he was able to
know what I was talking about and felt what I was feeling, and that's
how this album was able to come out. Thank God it was on a label like
Stones Throw that, y'know, is willing to put out stuff without all
the red tape involved.
Were you surprised at the positive reaction you received from that
release? Obviously, you speak like you weren't trying to appeal to a mass
audience or any specific groups, but it ended up happening.
No, I really appreciate it, man. I didn't expect it to be like that. I
was just doing music and if it got out, it just happened. It happened so
fast because my first release was Burn Rubber. It was a 12-inch remix for
Baron Zen, and Wolf offered me a 12-inch remix first because we had known
each other from DJing in LA. He liked DJing some of the modern soul,
modern funk and boogie tracks because he has that in his collection as
well, not just hip-hop, so he would come to Funkmosphere and I would go
see him spin and he just so happened to find out through Myspace that I
was doing tracks of my own. But I never tried to force it on him; I was
never one of those cats like trying to force my CD down people's throats
or anything like that. This all happened natural. I would've been doing
music still, working at my day job driving trucks, delivering things. To this day, I would have still been making music. It just happened that
Stones Throw took a liking and interest in something they thought was
true and heartfelt and the album just came together like that. If you
listen to the record carefully... y'know, I'm making it for the loners,
you know what I'm saying? The album is like, if you go to a club and you
walk out of that club and go down the street to a darker club that's
for, like, the different people. That's what Toeachizown is about, like
some different little personal things that's entwined in there that I
think if people listen, they'll catch on to it. Some of the chords, the
way it's kind of like a hazy vibe -- I really wanted to make it more of a
personal record for the people who are different than the regular cats.
So I think that's what Toeachizown -- even the title "to each his own," -- is. You're just entitled to do your own thing. And I don't do it for
critics. Now, I'm not going to lie to you, but I did want to make an
album that was funk-related, but that didn't have that weird, like, comedy
shit attached to it all the time. Know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
I didn't want it to be a comedy-laced album with rainbow attire and
platform shoes and all that stuff. And bell-bottoms. That's not the kind
of funk that I grew up on, but the commerciality of things made it into
that over the years. So my mission, if you will, was to turn it around,
to turn the perception around of funk music, man. Not to say that I'm
trying to take myself seriously, but I want the music to be taken more
seriously, you know what I mean? To look at where you can take funk-based
music to like Zappa did, where he did jazz and rock. And like Prince --
even Prince, he got more serious with funk but later on it got
misconstrued. I definitely want to bring funk to more of an urban
street level where people who make records in their bedrooms can think
and say feel comfortable to do funk if they want to. And get respected
by their friends and peers and not laughed at.
Is that kind of what your Funkmosphere weekly is all about, too? Like you're just trying to spread the word about funk?
Yeah, and that was another mission. Like in L.A., man, if you went to a
club, they would only play some of these tracks like once or twice in a
hip-hop or house set. No one would be concentrated on the sound from
beginning to end, so Funkmosphere is basically giving you a concentrated
experience in funk, boogie, post-disco, even some Chicago House and
Detroit sounds -- that kind of thing. It was to give a voice to
that kind of music but also give DJs a chance to put some different
records in their crates, and so far it's been great.
So this set you're going to play [at Rio Room]: Is it going to be like an extension of that?
I am going to play the Funkmosphere sound, but I'm also going to play
modern funk as well. Just like how, to combat some of the hecklers out
there or people that try to put me in a box, I did a mix called "The
Future Sound of Modern Funk," and that's available online, even on my blog called the GFF, Galactic
Funk Federation. There's a mix on it I did for a
lady named Mary Anne Hobbes on the BBC radio; it was all modern funk
new artists that are out doing this stuff, like B. Bravo, Devonwho, AD
Bourke. There's a lot of people who are doing the new sound, but it's
funk-based. It's not dubstep, it's not IDM, it's not shock rap like
what's going on now. It's modern funk. And I feel that there should be a
place for it in today's music.
