JC What was it like playing with Parliament back in the Mothership days?

MP It was a lot of fun. George has a whole different concept way on the other side of what James Brown’s concept was. George ain’t nothin’ but a party. You do what you want to do, come how you want to come and dress how you want to dress. If you feel like you just want to play and stand out and say, ‘hey, I want to play,’ cool, play. ‘I want to do a solo,’ fine, do it. But George’s thing was loose, I mean really really loose; it’s a party. Ya know, with James Brown you gotta have a bow tie, you’ve gotta have the same uniform, you’ve gotta have your shoes shined and all that. George didn’t care if you would wear shoes or not; or one shoe.

JC Or any clothes at all.

MP Exactly, or socks. You feel like you want to come in socks tonight, that’s cool. And it’s really true. If you’re there, you’re there to have some fun and come on let’s do it. Every now and then he may say, ‘bring the volume down a little bit,’ but other than that, that was it.

JC So Working with George was a very free musical experience?

MP It was a really free, fun kind of thing.

JC What did you learn from him as a bandleader?

MP From Who?

JC From George.

MP Nothin’. [Laughs] I really didn’t learn anything other than… I learned his way. I know his style which is not necessarily mine. But as far as getting the crowd up and the funky music and all, it’s the same. The same intensity, the same excitement and all that, but George just goes about it another way. And if I learned anything, that’s what it was. You can approach it a different way, but still get the same thing.

JC One of the all-time greatest funk albums has to be the Horny Horns album, A Blow For Me, A Toot For You. You had worked with Fred Wesley before- going back to the early days with James Brown. How did you two get back together to form the Horny Horns and what was it like working with Fred Wesley again?

MP Well, he left at a time and I left at a time and one of the times when he left he met George or Bootsy or somebody and then when he found out I left he said, ‘Well maybe we can get Maceo to come over here.’ And that’s what we did. And we were the same thing. Once you have a friendship or a camaraderie with somebody, you’ve got it. And I always enjoy working with Fred whenever the opportunity is there. So it was cool.

JC When you started up your solo recording in the early 90’s, you seemed to be going for a jazzier feel than you had before was that a conscious decision or is that just the way your music was going at the time?

MP Somebody suggested it. In fact, a producer suggested that and I went with it because that’s what time it was at that time.

JC Life On Planet Groove, the live album, was your first piece of real funk in your recent solo career. When you went back to that, was it a deliberate thing?

MP Well, I had done some other funky stuff- I wouldn’t say that it was the first- we just felt that it was the time to do that then, so we did it.

JC On the new album, you covered Stevie Wonder’s “Tell Me Something Good” as well as a few other covers. How do you go about choosing your covers?

MP Well, we have been playing all of those that are there other than the Stevie Wonder tune. Somebody suggested that one; they wanted to see what I could do with that. And I didn’t know whether to try- in fact I did do just an instrumental thing on it- and the same somebody- some people over in Germany said, ‘We think you ought to sing more.’ And I was in the mood to say o.k. to just about anything that somebody could come up with, so I gave it a shot. And they liked it so we decided to keep it.

JC That one turned out to be one of the highlights of the new release.

MP Well, let me tell you something. The guy who engineered the stuff is named Dan Wise out of New York, he has his own studio. I sort of let him produce. And again I was in the mood to give it a shot and that’s the way it came out.

JC …I had asked you about the Stevie Wonder song and you were telling me a little bit about how you choose covers for your albums.

MP We have been doing the tunes on the album, except that one, anyway. And I had a guitar thing going on the instrumental Marvin Gaye tune, but then I decided to a saxophone thing for the album. We hadn’t been doing that one, with the guitar, for a while… It’s always nice to have that one in the background when you’re making some kind of announcement about something, “Oh yeah, we’re going to be in blah blah blah next week,” or, “we’re going to be coming back here da da ad.” We had been doing it like that, for making announcements or somebody’s gotta move their car or whatever. but then I decided to do a saxophone thing with it. But all the tunes we’ve doing except for “Tell me Something Good”- that was suggested by one of the guys who handled the album in Germany. They wanted to know what to do with that tune, I guess and, as I said earlier, I had done an instrumental thing on it. And then I decided to do a vocal on. And I sort of let the engineer, Dan Wise, I let him produce it a little bit because he sort of liked that song too and we just kind kicked it around and it came out like it is.

JC The European music market, historically, has always been hungry for American jazz. How much did the demand in Europe for your music have to do with your solo albums of the early 90’s?

MP Europe is a very important market for us. They seem to like what we play and what we bring to the table. just like people here, they figure out- there’s a lot of festivals over there, especially during the month of July, there’s a lot of places to play and a lot of venues throughout the whole European market- but they like what we do. The college kids over there are kind of like the college kids over here and they like the funky side of how we do it and they just kind of flock around it.

JC You tour almost constantly and often play shows that run over three hours. How do you keep doing that all the time?

MP [Laughs] It’s just our style. It’s just the way we do it. I just like for people to leave with the feeling that they made a wise choice by coming to our concert. If they want to party, I want them to leave feeling like they have been partied and partied with. A lot of times, the situation is that there’s a time limit on what we do, for whatever reason. But if we have the time, yeah, I’ll try and get in as much as I can. It goes right back to what we’ve been talking about from the beginning. I chose to do this and I enjoy doing it. And I enjoy bring joy, happiness, peace and love and togetherness and I try and promote that through the music. I like it when people can put aside their political differences and religious differences and whatever differences you may have and just put them aside for a minute and they’re all just one audience and they’re having fun. And I like to see that. I enjoy that. It makes me feel good to know that I can be one of the reasons why people can get together and just have fun; congregate.

JC When did Corey [Maceo’s son] start working with you musically?

MP It’s been almost three years now. That’s how long we’ve been doing those tunes and that’ how we knew the sort of impact that they have. Ya know, “Maceo’s Groove” and the Marvin Gaye thing, and there’s a whole nother thing that we do at the end of the show that’s not part of the album. He was an engineer major at North Carolina State in Raleigh, North Carolina. And he had been there for a while and started feeling that maybe he didn’t want to be an engineer and one night it just came to him, “I think I can write some rap.” And so he just started writing what was in his head. And then he decided- he let me know, “Hey man, I’ve written some stuff I think it would fit with some kind of groove blah blah blah. So I said, “Yeah, right, o.k. Since you wrote it, can’t nobody perform it like you.” He, “Well, o.k. I’ll try.” And he tried and like it.

JC Does having Corey in the band change the dynamic, on stage, between you and the rest of the band?

MP I don’t think so, It’s hard for me to no that if it did. It gives me an energy and it makes my family life closer. There’s a small separation between my entertaining and my family and it sort of brings that gap a little closer together because now there’s two interests, mine and his. But I don’t what effect it has on other guys in the group; that maybe something you’d have to ask them.

JC What’s going on with you next? Do you have any plans beyond the current tour?

MP Not really. This thing, “Funk Overload”, is brand new so we’re sort of jumping on that bandwagon right now; just trying to tour. That’s what’s on the front burner right now, just touring, trying to get in as many dates as we can while the interest is there. This thing we’re doing right now is going to last weeks. We’re right at the end of the third week and then once we finish the fourth week we have about ten, eleven, or twelve days home before we go and do a six week thing over in Europe. It’s just go, go, go all the time. That’s primarily what we do; we just tour, man. And like I said, as long as the interest is there we try and fulfill all that we can.

JC If the venue doors out here in the northwest are any indication, you can tour as long as you want. They were turning people away out front in Seattle, they sold out the seats and all the standing room.

MP I think we as a society, I guess, I don’t know what others do at their concerts because I’m always at mine, but I like to try and give the audience a little bit more than what they could get at a traditional jazz concert. What we try to do with the funky music, we get you to wave your hands in the air, we get you to move from side to side, we get you to shake everything you got. It’s about audience participation and all that kind of stuff, so they really really were worked and feel like they were part of it and felt like they had a good time. Again, I chose this form, this style because I like to have the audience be involved. I could stand there and play twelve, thirteen, fourteen jazz tunes a night like other jazz groups and a call a tune right up behind another and then, “O.K., time’s up.” I could do that, if I wanted to, but I want to give a little bit more than that.

JC Well, I can only speak for myself, but I, as a fan and as a music writer, I appreciate what you put out there of yourself every time you go out on stage.

MP Thank you very much. And it seems throughout that people do appreciate it when you give ‘em just a little bit more then just going out there and playing the tunes and calling another and playing that tune. Because pretty soon the time is up. I remember somebody telling me, you go to some concerts and there ain’t nothin but you call a tune. And what may be different is the form of solos, this guy’s going to solo and then this guy’s going to solo… I don’t want all those people who come to see or show who have seen our show more than once- they kind of have an idea of what we’re going to do, but sometime I’ll throw in a surprise here and there and I still like for them to feel like they have really been part of it and had a good time. That’s the plan.

JC I think your plan is working. I think that’s why people keep coming back every time you roll through town.

MP Thank you very much.

JC Thank you very much for your time and enjoy your brief vacation after this tour.

MP Another thing too, I like to try to add- just like I do in the shows- something about on behalf of all of us, “We love you.” I love to use that word, ‘love’. I think it’s important to let those listeners and readers know that I do love them and the guys in the group love them for the support that we’ve gotten. Not only people in the audience, but people like you who want to take the time to get a word in- an interview in- we appreciate all that.

JC Hey if I can be even a little part of spreading the funk, that’s my part, that’s what I’m here for.

MP O.K., partner….

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