So my first CD, FUNKMEISTER has been pressed and will be shipping shortly. I wanted to write a few things about the CD so people know where I am coming from with this.
First of all, the use of the term FUNKMEISTER is not at all intended to label myself as “the Funkmeister”, and after this album I will not be “the Funkmeister”… probably will be “Papi Chulo” or some such thing… it’s really a phrase and a phase, and the whole thing is really just a joke. Have you ever noticed that whenever you’re in a bar, listening to a dance band, they always introduce their bass player as “the Funkmeister” ? I noticed that. It’s extremely old school. I’d say a lot of things about my record are old-school, but not the overall context. Perhaps my songwriting is old school. But is that so bad? Some of my favorite songs are old school. I will say I’m deep off into new school technology and I think that shows in the album.
So, the album having been done and finished, is now a past work, and while it’s new to all of you, I’ve lived with it for the past… umm… well really many years if you count the fact that I wrote Out of Control in 1985, and I Want to Love You in 1990, etc. etc. I actually began work in earnest on this album in January of 2008, when we recorded “Make No Mistake” with Jesse Jones Jr., Joe Collado and myself here at the studio. Obviously since that song reflected on the George Bush decade, it was much more recent. Elisa Sintjago came in and recorded her tracks in July of 2008 and Dennis Sierra came into the studio in October to do his part.
Many people who know me and my musical style will probably ask, after hearing this album, “Hey Huey, where is all the hot-rod bass playing and astronomical synth soloing we come to expect from you on gigs these last how many years?” Well, there is some of that on the CD, but really not as much as you might expect. Personally, I work with many different types of musicians, some of them are team players and some are soloists. I purposefully steered clear of the flashy soloist approach to the music, I was much more interested in getting an overall well produced representation of some fairly structured songs. I approached this album with more of a focus on taking some basic parts and producing them to the best possible sound and sequential combination I could come up with — and believe me I tried hundreds of edits before I finally arrived at what was to be a fairly simple formula for getting the biggest sound possible. I also experimented in several areas with synthesizer layering, achieving what I think is a fairly fat analog sounding synth wall at points on the album.
As I’ve written before I have boxes of old cassette tapes full of original compositions and I’ve already started extracting some of them for my next CD, as well as writing some new stuff. I plan on the next CD to venture a little more into the realm of technical musicianship in terms of showing off some playing chops, and yes, that means some soloing and hot-rodding is in the pipeline, so stay tuned.
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