HTTP://WWW.LAST.FM/MUSIC/FONKSQUISH
Band Members: Chuck Fishman, Neal Landauer, Jason Fifield—and too many others to mention. fONKSQUISh features members of P-Funk, and jazz legends like Byard Lancaster, Prince Lasha, as well as new school producers like G Koop and DJ Zeph.
Tech Industry Affiliation: Chuck is Manager of Media and Entertainment at Cisco.
Calling Me Back (with DJ Zeph and Michael Hampton [P-Funk])
Dippin’ Chicken (Team Facelift cover)
It’s Okay to Love (Germantown Dub, featuring Byard Lancaster)
SVR: Tell us about your band. How did you get started? How long have you been playing?
Chuck: I toured with George Clinton & Parliament / Funkadelic (P-Funk All Stars) for a few years in the late nineties. During this period, I teamed up with P-Funk’s Billy Bass and a motley cast of musicians to create the first solo album for “Chuck Da Fonk Fishman.” I realized that my musical vision revolved around a larger cast of musicians than just my own songs and material. I moved to Denver in 1997 and founded fONKSQUISh. So the unit has been around for more than 10 years now, and has been based out of Denver, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Really the key members of the band are spread about the country. When we play live we typically feature 6-8 members, and our recorded sound is lush with a diversity of instruments.
SVR: Who are your major influences?
Chuck: I would say anything with a dance component to it. I was raised on new wave, which eventually led me to listening to funk music full time. For example, I was listening to Thomas Dolby in 1986, who was collaborating with George Clinton at the time. That was my first exposure to George Clinton and P-Funk, via new wave. And I am a huge Duran Duran fan. What does this all mean for the music we make? I am not sure—I look at my Last.fm top plays and it’s all jumbled with indie hip-hop artists, jazz legends, new wave, IDM, chillout, electro, R&B funk—I listen to all kinds of music and I hope it’s reflecting in the music of fONKSQUISh. A lot of the members of fONKSQUISh bring their own perspective as well—I mean we were just working with Prince Lasha, a member of the legendary John Coltrane Quartet; he is of course going to bring a different jazz sound to fONKSQUISh.
SVR: When did you form your band? What inspired you to make music together?
Chuck: 1997. I just wanted to have a funk band and somehow I’ve kept it going all these years.
SVR: What’s your ultimate direction for your band? Are you seeking fame and fortune—at least in the music business?
Chuck: We want to keep making music, especially with the funk and jazz legends who keep contributing to the collective that is fONKSQUISh. We also want to find the freshest producers and remixers / DJs to work with, and the most current talents out there to join the effort. All of that vision takes money&mcash;cash to pay out talented musicians, and funds for studio time and completion of the tracks. At the end of the day, we want to keep making records way into the future. We are already now three years into our next collection of songs titled “Useless Education”—recording began in 2005. Really it all comes down to having the funds to match the production schedule we have mapped out for the record. That’s why our work dribbles out via EPs, digital singles, and through social networks just bit by bit in the meantime before we can assemble the full collection. All I want for fONKSQUISh is to have a small boutique label with a roster of similar artists to help our marketing efforts and to feel like we have a home.
Live fONKSQUISh shows happen all over the place—Denver, Philadelphia, San Francisco, London and Paris. We want to also have the ability to continue to expose our music to live audiences around the world.
SVR: What’s your day job?
Chuck: I currently examine the digital media industry for Cisco and manage company relationships with media and entertainment partners. For the past 12 years, I’ve been creating and producing new radio ventures for Clear Channel, Bloomberg, CNET Networks, and Dow Jones. At CNET, with Brian Cooley, I helped build CNET Radio, the first all technology news radio network. From 2002 to 2006, I headed up the Wall Street Journal’s long form radio programming ventures. I created two shows, The Wall Street Journal This Morning and The Wall Street Journal This Weekend, and in four years time I grew distribution of the programs from only two terrestrial radio stations to 220 plus stations, airtimes on XM and Sirius Satellite Radio, and 100,000 monthly podcast downloads without marketing support. As a radio producer, my love of the intersection of entertainment, technology, and business was reflected in my programs.
I’ve been a member of the digital music networking group Pho since 1999, and I continue to remain engaged and excited by everything that is going on with digital music and media. I participate as a member of the IAB Digital Video Committee, the IAB UGC and Social Networking Committee, and at the Entertainment Technology Center at USC.
SVR: How does your music influence your work or vice versa?
Chuck: Since day one with fONKSQUISh, I’ve utilized online platforms to promote our music and connect with fans. Over the years, the time I’ve spent on mp3.com, MySpace, Facebook, and a myriad of other online communities and forums promoting the music—well, it has informed and expanded my knowledge of the digital media marketplace—the industry I work directly in. I can relate my knowledge of digital media and music business models, social media marketing tools, and the user experience on such platforms directly to the online creative efforts I’ve put toward fONKSQUISh.
SVR: Why is music education important?
Chuck: Learning how to play an instrument well offers a student the ability to practice discipline. That’s what I think of first off. But there is the enjoyment of playing—and I want every child to have the ability to enjoy that. I hope that music education also includes exposure to the business elements of the music industry as well. I’m still learning myself—I spend many hours with these older talented musicians. I call it “people digging.” We are currently losing our greatest generation of R&B and jazz musicians—just this year: Levi Stubbs, Isaac Hayes, Buddy Miles, Pervis Jackson, Jerry Wexler, Norman Whitfield—just to name a few. It’s time for the younger generation of musicians to go out and “people dig” the great musicians in their neighborhoods and get the knowledge before these musicians pass on.
SVR: What was your own experience learning music as a kid? Who flipped that switch your brain?
Chuck: I’m not sure. I certainly could say that it was a healthy dose of MTV, and UK music magazines like NME and The Face, that got me engaged. I also lived in downtown Philadelphia, so there were plenty of record stores to stop by on the way home from school. So I would say I spent almost a half-hour in a record store every day after school.
