Lenny Holmes, Jerome "Bigfoot" Brailey and Jeff "Cherokee" Bunn will join other P-Funk associates for a concert at the Hofheimer Building on New Year's Eve. (Provided photo)
"It was a funny, loving, sad, once-in-a-lifetime experience," says drummer Jerome Brailey, the man who became known as "Bigfoot" during his days performing and recording with the ultimate funk-rock superband, Parliament-Funkadelic.
"I'm a funkster," he says, laughing. "It's just in my DNA."
Brailey is also the independent spirit who left P-Funk, the name given to describe the music created by several groups, overseen by vocalist and songwriter George Clinton, to chart his own course in funk outfits like Quazar and Mutiny. The latter's memorable "Mutiny on the Mamaship" album remains possibly the strongest P-Funk offshoot of all.
The Richmond native brings what he calls "my P-Funk all-stars" to the Hofheimer Building on New Year’s Eve for a special show. The group will include other P-Funk veterans with Richmond connections, such as Jeff "Cherokee" Bunn, a bassist who started with the group at age 17 by performing with the P-Funk-affiliated Brides of Funkenstein — they still tour today — and the original Sir Nose D'Voidafunk, dancer Larry Heckstall.
"Kevin Goins, the younger brother of the late Glen Goins, will also be there," Brailey says. "And we'll do many of the tracks his brother sang lead on, because he's got a similar voice. Glen Goins was the best vocalist that P-Funk ever had, and Kevin was with us in Quazar."
Keeping it in the family, there's also Kevin Shider, the brother of the late vocalist and guitarist Gary "Doo Wop" Shider, and Gary's widow, Linda, who will be among the background vocalists. Lenny Holmes, Brailey's guitarist in Mutiny, is also on board, along with keyboardist Sharla "Sharlafunk" Patrick, who Bigfoot calls "a Bernie Worrell protege," referring to the late P-Funk co-founder.
"Without giving too much away, we're going to hit them with the hits, and then we're going to lay some B-side funk in on them," says Bunn of the show at The Hof. "It's going to sound like 1970s vintage P-Funk, extremely raw."
"We're going to play tracks that people love," Bigfoot adds. "I mean, it is New Year’s Eve after all." He lists "Bop Gun," "Good To My Earhole," "One Nation Under a Groove," "Not Just Knee Deep," "Flashlight" and "Red Hot Momma" as some of the classics fans just might hear during the New Year’s concert. And, of course: "Tear the Roof Off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk)."
Brailey co-wrote "Tear the Roof Off the Sucker," the group's biggest hit, in 1975. He was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame 22 years later with leader George Clinton and 14 other members of the hugely influential and prolific ensemble.
The drummer doesn't mine his P-Funk past all that often — he did perform a memorable series of gigs with "Original P," a band made of ex-P-Funk veterans, at the Richmond Folk Festival in 2011. He also led a foursome that focused on rare P-funk songs, called "Other Funky Music," that played the Canal Club in 2015. Mostly, he's been touring and recording with Third Rail, a trio that includes jazz-funk legends Bill Laswell and James Blood Ulmer, and working on projects such as the soundtrack to an upcoming animated film "Blockwood." Earlier this year, he played the skins on Smith and Hay's "Jazz (Deluxe)," which hit No. 1 on Billboard's Jazz charts.
Still, P-Funk, which fell off in the early '80s, has never left him. "This music is constantly recycling and recycling," he says. "Ice Cube has a new song, 'I'm the New Funkadelic,' a rehash of 'Knee Deep.' And Childish Gambino just sampled 'Do That Stuff.' It's everywhere."
With George Clinton's recent announcement that he would be retiring from live performing, Bunn says that there's an audience out there yearning to hear P-Funk's unique sound — the original sound. "You still have the old guys who are doing this music. We recently lost Bernie [Worrell] and Junie [Morrison] and I think there is a desire, a mandate from within the P-Funk family to maintain this thing."
Retirement notwithstanding, Clinton resurrected the Parliament name for the first time in 38 years with this summer's "Medicaid Fraud Dog" release. "It's good stuff," says Bunn. "I mean, Fred Wesley's on it. But it's not Parliament." Brailey agrees. "Yeah, that's not Parliament. It's OK, but I would call it the New Parliament or Parliament Recycled or Parliament Redo." Gone, he says, is the heart that the original players brought to the music.
Bigfoot's own musical journey started in Richmond, at 17, with the Montclairs, which formed at Armstrong High School. From there he hooked up with a popular Washington, D.C., group, the Unifics, and later the Five Stairsteps (he was the drummer on their huge pop hit, "O-o-h Child'). It was while performing on "Soul Train" with the Stairsteps that he met the Chambers Brothers, who were at the time applying their own stamp on fusing funk with rock.
Clinton called him one night before the recording of Parliament's 1975 Mothership Connection LP. "They knew that I was the closest thing to Tiki Fulwood, their original drummer." But things eventually soured and members began leaving — Brailey and Goins left to form Quazar just before the "Motor Booty Affair" tour — over financial disputes. "People got tired of creating and not getting credit for it."
How'd he get the nickname Bigfoot, anyway? "It's because of how I hit the bass drum. I like that push in the music," he says. "When we'd be in the studio, George would say to turn the bass drum up, yelling, 'Give me that foot, give me that foot.' "
Jerome Brailey and the P-Funk All Stars will perform Dec. 31 at the historic Hofheimer Building with Black Masala, Corey AXT and DJ Nink2ndo. 2818 W. Broad St. 8 p.m. $50 to $145. Advance tickets only.
