I’m sure you guys had your own style before that, but do you think that playing with them and learning those kind of things affected not only being able to play Fela’s music in particular but in your own writing of that genre?

Yeah—it’s like a martial art, you know? Not everybody is a master, but you master a martial art and you figure out these other things that you have learned on your own and how you can graph things onto this older style and make it work, make it more powerful, make it more robust or make it more appropriate to whatever new surroundings.

I am also interested in your relationship personally with Daptone Records and Gabriel Roth in particular. How did you guys meet, and what was your early relationship like?

We knew each other in college. I had transferred to NYU my second year of college, and he was one of the first people that I met. He was already really active playing music and was studying audio engineering at NYU. We hung out a lot, and we would go see his band, and the second year that I was there, we both needed an apartment so we moved in together. I guess the first time I ever got into the studio was with some recording project he was working on. I had just started playing tenor saxophone so I was totally blown away with the studio. So much of my early lessons about music and recording and gigging were through Gabe. So when he wanted to put a band together—which was sort of the first incarnation of Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings—we were roommates and we would pound the pavement putting up flyers and auditioning musicians and holding rehearsals, and I was in that, working with him for a couple of years. Then a few years after the project that went on to become The Dap-Kings got off the ground, I wanted to put Antibalas together.

Was that the Soul Providers that you were talking about?

Yeah. And [Antibalas] was sort of an extension of a record that the precursor to Daptone made called The Daktaris that we made with some African musicians. It was kind of just a one-off studio project—it was never meant to become a ban. So I wanted to take that energy—the inspiration of Fela, but not necessarily doing a cover band, not doing Afrobeat exactly how he did it—and bring in some other African influences and other textures and possibilities. So [Gabriel] helped me get that off the ground and opened up the studios for us to do our first recordings and wrote a bunch of our early songs. Around 2002/2003, up until that point there were about five or six guys that were playing full time in both bands. The Dap-Kings and Antibalas were getting so busy that in order for both bands to keep on growing, we had to kind of split up and pledge more full-time allegiance to one band over the other. So that was kind of a bittersweet moment, because from that point on we saw each other less and less because we were on the road and stuff.

It’s cool that early on you helped each other build these bands that have grown into such successes. It seems like working in the Daptone environment is like a family—close knit even with the different kind of artists. And I know Binky Griptite from The Dap-Kings helped you guys at Brooklyn Bowl last month. What is your working relationship with Gabe and all of those guys—do you try to play together even though you’re all so busy?

Yeah, actually Gabe is putting together a big project for the 100th Daptone 45, and I am helping him get a whole bunch of horn players together, because it’s going to be like 20 or 30 horn players that have reconnected in the Daptone band over the past couple of years. I just had dinner with him in California last week. We try to catch up when we can, and it’s not easy, but we have remained really close over the years. I think it’s pretty likely that when we get back to the studio, Antibalas will be doing stuff with him this spring.

I was going to ask about that, do you guys have plans to record another album soon?

Yup.

When might that come out?

[Laughs] It’s anybody’s guess—hard to say.

Do you do a lot of work in the Daptone studio, The House of Soul?

It depends on the project and what is going on. It’s kind of a good thing and a bad thing that there are so many good musicians involved. In the early days, you know, it was a much smaller group of musicians that were fluent in the music and could be relied on to make it happen, so you would get a lot more calls. And also the thing was we weren’t touring as much, and now it’s sort of like, when a recording project is going on, it’s sort of whoever is around, you know? Because there are so many people, you don’t always get the calls as much, because you might be on the road and there’s some other really good young person who has been in the mix for three or four years, so they can do it. Ultimately that’s a good thing. I think it’s better that there are more people that are fluent in the different types of music that we play and can make it happen.

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