DāM Funk
Looking Out the window
BY Peter Agoston
Damon “DāM-FunK” and I go way back. In 2008, captivated by the rawness of Rhythm Trax Vol. 4 (and “Burgundy City,” the single that followed) I was determined to know more about this emerging, seemingly elusive artist. The swells, the swing and the synth of his sound drew close to the touchstones of soulful dance music. Yet, Dam’s drum programming, arrangements and tempos had a musical intellect that felt distinctly unique.
No less than a year later, as Dam’s booking agent, I coordinated his global touring schedule as a DJ and band leader. At the same time, his official album, Toeachizown, debuted on the Stones Throw label as a 5xLP box set. It was bold and comprehensive, filled with future-thinking funk instrumental and vocal tracks, like the nearly ten-minute odyssey “Brookside Park,” a slumping, psychedelic bump where Dam subtly recounts an extraterrestrial experience at the beautiful public park in Pasadena, California, by the famed Rose Bowl.
Back then, I traveled with him to shows quite a bit, “Funk is not a fad; it’s a way of life” being an early mantra kicked down during soundcheck before any number of memorable nights. This would eventually birth his idea of modern-funk as a genre and an overview of his own work. “A smile, with a tear,” another unique take he’d have on his productions. His long-running Los Angeles club residency, Funkmosphere, was a haven for budding artists alongside folks ready to dance to lesser-known records that Dam was inadvertently putting the world on to. Anyone who discovered RAH Band’s “Messages From The Stars” after 2008 can thank DāM-FunK and Funkmosphere for the introduction. The boogie mega-boom in popularity of the mid-aughts is largely due to his parties and, more so, his rare willingness to hold up the record sleeve of what he is playing at the moment and let the audience know what exactly they are hearing.
His record-collecting origins didn’t just start and end in funk. Dam, a child of the ’70s, explored his native Los Angeles by bicycle for most of his adolescence, taking weekend excursions to mom-and-pop vinyl outposts all over the city, carefully curating a personal style that would inform his sound and aesthetics for years to come. Around the 2010s, in the face of commercial electronic music’s obsession with EDM and dubstep, Dam penned the term “modern-funk” to help the public better understand his approach. Early in his career, his production process was like that of no other musician I’ve worked with. On his own hardware compact disc multi-track recorder, he assembled a song’s structure on one burnt CD at a time, starting with the drums and the bass, then one layer of synth, and another, and another—all on their own dedicated, individual disc. By the time a whole song was completed, it would be the result of several burned CD takes—much of this made Toeachizown.
Damon views things both analytically and sentimentally, and it shows. Long bike rides as a kid growing up in Pasadena evolved into a master craftsman for the funk. Enjoy the ride.
"Funk is not a fad; it’s a way of life”
A Portable Paradise. “Usually where there are records, there are record players.”
What’s your earliest memory of being gifted music before you started buying on your own?
One of the first records gifted to me was for Christmas 1976. It was the soundtrack to the great movie Car Wash, produced by Norman Whitfield and recorded by a Los Angeles-based group called Rose Royce on MCA Records.
As a child of the ‘70s and growing up in the 1980s, what were some of your record shop experiences during these times?
One of the record stores that my dad would take me to whenever we’d go on a drive to Hollywood was Tower Records. I would look at what he would grab; then we would go to Carney’s Hamburgers and Hotdogs, located inside an old train car on Sunset Boulevard. It was good times in the 1970s, and as I started getting older, it was Poo-Bah Records on Walnut in Pasadena at the old house location that opened me up to different styles and genres. That was my first introduction to starting to build my record collection.
Jay Green was the owner; he created a fantastic atmosphere where you walk in, with the floor creaking and everything set up. Import sections, soul, funk, rock, punk and even a noise category! They exceeded other record stores in the city that would cater to the charts. It gave you that environment, a peek into deeper aspects of record buying.
James Ferraro – Night Dolls With Hairspray
“The standout track is ‘Killer Nerd.’ It’s a great punk new wave song that I can’t believe was recorded in the 2000s. It sounds like it could have come out in 1982 or even 1979. It has that early VHS ‘80s vibe.”
