Bayou City Funk, Down To Funk

I’ve got a serious soft spot when it comes to funk — there was this whole phase in college back in the ’90s, plus some time spent combing bins at record stores and all that, yadda, yadda, and while I’ve generally shifted away from it in later years in terms of stuff I listen to regularly, that initial love still burns deep down in my heart.

So it makes me happy to look around and feel like maybe there’s a quiet, under-the-covers funk/soul revival going on, at least in the Houston area if not across the country. With The Suffers breaking out into the wider world beyond Beltway 8 and new funk (or at least funk-influenced) bands popping up these past couple of years, I can’t help but smile. It feels like that long-gone ’90s funk era all over again, albeit on a smaller scale.

And Bayou City Funk is most definitely part of that. While yeah, I was initially a little skeptical of yet another band of mostly-white dudes playing funk, I’d heard enough of the band since its formation to be won over and was curious to see how it’d progress; the band’s debut EP, Down To Funk, serves as a pretty good opening salvo. What I come away from the EP with, first and foremost, is that holy shit can these guys play. The members of BCF are damn talented musicians to a man, and they play like a tight, tight unit, with a back-and-forth chemistry that’s hard to fake.

Opening instrumental “Pile Driver” starts things off on the right foot; it begins quiet and almost hypnotic, riding a jazzy guitar figure and tuning-up horns but quickly segues into nimble, sharp-edged, speedy funk with some seriously excellent horns. The band comes off like The J.B.’s at their best, and that’s no mean feat.

Actually, the other standout track on Down To Funk is also an instrumental, now that I think about it. Don’t take “Spy Funk”‘s name too seriously — while I guess there’s a bit of a “spy” vibe here (especially with the mid-song Bond theme nod), what I really hear is something that could’ve been on the soundtrack to pretty much any ’70s Blaxploitation movie you can name. This is the music that plays when John Shaft rolls down the streets of Harlem with a big-ass grin on his face, daring anybody to mess with him, and it’s flat-out great.

Now, I don’t mean any offense to guitarist/singer Sean Garrison, mind you — he does a damn fine job, and I truly like the Bill Withers influence I’m pretty sure I can hear in his vocals, especially on “Talkin’ Jive”. But there are times on the EP where I find myself wishing he’d just step back and let the music do more of the talking, y’know? Because when the band finds the room to stretch out, they pull out some truly cool shit, like the low-key Latin percussion touches in “Talkin’ Jive” or the watery-sounding keys in the title track, which make me think of either Parliament’s spaceward-pointing psych-funk tendencies (or Dr. Dre’s production style, whichever).

“Look Inside” is nice, too, with a bit of a more laid-back blues feel and a thoughtful/soulful bent to it, and then closer “Thick N’ Sticky” harks back to The Bar-Kays, to my ears, with the bass doing kind of a “Chase Me” thing I can’t help but love. And yes, that song does pretty much the most “funk song” thing imaginable: it’s all about how damn funky the band is, including an actual guarantee of funkiness.

And y’know, after hearing Down To Funk, I can’t disagree. The only thing that really bugs me when I listen to Bayou City Funk is that I find myself wishing I was listening to it and watching it live, rather than in my headphones, and hey, that’s no bad thing.

(Feature photo by Brandon Holley.)