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Lefties Soul Connection

Drumsuite: What music did you grow up with ?

In my early years my father played jazz (Lious Armstrong etc) and he liked the Dutch 60s music (Shocking Blue, Tee Set, Rob Hoeke etc). But he played mainly French chansons. When I was a teenager I liked a lot of styles; Dutch rock/soul/punk, Osdorp posse (early Dutch hiphop), US garage & Otis Redding but also somebody like Janis Joplin. When I was around 18, the acid Jazz thing started and I liked Jamiroquai, Gangstarr, Tribe Called Quest etc. During that time I also started to like the Hammond sound and started to collect (Hammond) soul jazz records, followed by hard bop jazz, soul, funk & hiphop.

Listening to your sound i thought you were all b.boys at heart ?

Nope, none of us is actually. When I was really young, I did some b.boying when it was first introduced in the early 80s because at my school there were a lot of kids from Surinam that were into it (my b.boying was only a little breaking, I was more into graf writing). But some bandmembers weren't even into hiphop in general before we started Lefties.

Can you tell us how the 'Lefties Soul Connection' came about ?

Before Lefties I was, together with guitarist Onno Smit, in a more acid jazz type band that played a mixture of Sly & the Family Stone, Curtis Mayfield and some instrumental souljazz type stuff. About 1998 I started to collect more raw soul & funk and liked the style more and more, especially after Keb Darge's Legendary Deep Funk compilation release. In april 2001 I started a party called Struttin' together with Lord Fader (Bart) in club Mazzo (a couple of months later Taco Fett joined us). With Struttin' we wanted to introduce the funk45s to Amsterdam. We also invited dj's like Keb Darge to our party (now every first Friday @ Bitterzoet, Amsterdam). I also wanted to play this music live during our party's and therefore Onno and I started Lefties Soul Connection and we left the other band. Not much later I met Cody Vogel, our drummer, in my favorite bar (De Duivel) and he joined us. About a half year later Bram joined us and we started to write our own material. After a couple of gigs at Struttin we also started to play at other party's and released our first 45 on Melting Pot Music, and the rest is history...

Who was/is your biggest influence and helped shape the sound you have today ?

That has to be the hammond organist (dr.) Lonnie Smith. I just started to play more hammond organ myself (I had electronic organ music lessons in my teens) and especially his first record (Fingerlickin good) was a big influence. Also his 'Move your hand' record. I saw him live a couple of times and I tried to play like him (this is about 10 years ago). Nowadays you can still hear some influence from him but now I'm more influenced by somebody like Art Neville and organists on the funk45s of course.

At the moment your more of an instrumental band, is there any plans to add a singer ?

Well, Onno is a good singer and he does some vocal tracks but we've choosen to play instrumental music. The Meters and a lot of funk45s are also instrumental and they are our main influence. For us the groove and sound is the most important thing, and I think adding a singer or horns is also a bit cliche. People always expect to see a front man/woman singer and a horn section with a funk band. We wanted to break with this cliche and concentrate on the original sound of funk, raw & dirty. Just a rhythm section and no fancy bull shit with flamboyant suits or whatever. But we don't mind working with a singer. Although, to me this would be a featuring thing. Furthermore, it really should add something to our sound. We don't want somebody that doesn't fit with our sound and can't sing with real soul.

Being a part of the 'New funk' movement how do you see it progressing ?

First of all, is there a 'new funk' movement? Here in Holland its only, unfortunately, a couple of people really into it. Other countries its a bit more but there are not many much bands. I hope there will be more bands and people playing raw funk & soul stuff. A problem for the progress could be the 'movement' wants to keep it strictly old school. I like the old school stuff but Lefties is also trying to bring the 60s funk influences to today and has already progressed to a more overall raw sound and is also into hiphop breakbeat stuff (e.g. Organ Donor). We're also working on remixes etc. Another good example of progressing of the 'movement' is the work Quantic is doing and some releases on Melting Pot. Also there will be a mix of raw funk with other styles. A good example is the track Suga mama by Beyonce on her new album. I've got no problem with that. This will hopefully also lead to more people checking out the original stuff.

Is there any 'old' artist you'd like to record with ?

Personally, I really would like to record with Betty Harris.

You've travelled with the Lefties, what is your favourite city and clubnight at the moment ?

There are a lot of great venues/party's. But if I had to choose one it has to be the 'Funk-Inn' party at the Schutzi in Olten (Switzerland). This is a great venue with about 700 people going nuts on funk !!

The Lefties Soul Connection have been well recieved abroad, you must feel very proud of this ?

I definitely do.

You do a bit of djing as well, have you always collected funk45's ?

No, like i said earlier I was into many different music styles. Even now I'm not a major funk45 collector and also buy other music styles. I'm also happy with a reissue 45, but its always nice to find an orginal 45 cheap :-).

What's your top 3 tipples ?

(1) Beer. (2) Wine. (3) Vodka Juice - Screwdriver.

Future plans if you can share them ?!

We're working on the new album. Unfortunately we had some delay because we had so many gigs this summer. Hopefully it will be ready for release in March 2007. It will be a bit more vocal and there are some different grooves too. But of course it will be the same Lefties Sound as before. Maybe this year there will be a remix 12" of the Organ Donor single and maybe even a new 45. Depends on our recordings :-).

Thanks for taking the time out to do this interview is anything else you'd like to say ?

Keep up the good work and hope to meet you again soon.

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