Ep 187 Cap'n Funk & the Groove Train

Their music blends rock and pop, with some funk, to create a wall of relentless harmonies. The lyrics are personal and inspired by legends of the time.  The horn section steps up seamlessly with the funky flavor we have all learned to love, supported by each other to form the groove.  The powerful bands of the 70’s and into the 80’s is what they do! Ray and Mike met with band members Tom Schuett and Rick Ippolito to talk about where this group came from and where they’re headed.

Transcript

Coming to you from the studios at the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66, it's the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. Hey everybody, it's Ray the Roadie. And this is Hollywood Esquire once again this evening.

Man, two weeks in a row. Two weeks in a row. Man, what's going on with this Esquire thing? Are you just a squire for some kingdom? I don't know.

I guess I got to make myself feel more important. Yeah. You know, I'm not a drummer.

That's true. That's true. You're not.

That's true. Why do you need to feel important? That's an inside joke. Are you depressed? Are you... No, not at all.

No? No. I've got, there's musicians in the studio here tonight that are probably way more talented than I am, so. Okay.

So you're intimidated? Maybe. That could be it. Could be a little bit intimidated.

Yeah, a little bit. What is this? Let's see. No, that wasn't it.

No, those are crickets. Those are crickets. Crickets, yes.

That's the one. There you go. That's the one you wanted, yeah.

So who do we have? We have Captain Funk and The Groove Train. All right. Joining us tonight is Tom and Rick from the band.

How you guys doing? Fantastic. Thanks for having us. Hey, never better.

Never better. Great. Love hanging out with friends.

Yeah. So how'd you hear about us? I picked Rick. I know the drummer never talks, but this one does all the talk.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, he told me about it. So are you actually Captain Groove or Captain Funk? Well, I started the band back in 2012.

Okay. Just me. Just you.

And I thought, all right, we've done this before. Where are we going to start, Tom? And I said, well, you're a drummer. You start with the bass player.

You said Tom because that's your name. Yeah. And so we had a conversation with Tom and found a bass player.

And here we are. There's eight of us in the band. It was always planned to be seven or eight.

We have no lead singers. We have three guys in the front line that are all capable of singing lead. That was my plan.

Also instrumentalists or? They all play instruments. They do. Okay.

Everybody plays instruments. Not like three dog night where there's three singers. No, sir.

No, sir. That's a great question, though. But, you know, I've learned a long time ago when the voice goes and the band goes.

And so I don't sing and I'm the band. And I thought, okay, let's be fair with me here. Let's plan this out.

So, you know, it's been a long road, a long life of learning, learning to put this together. It's a business. There's no question about it.

It doesn't take just talent and luck. It takes it's a business. It takes a lot of passion and drive and put it together.

But, you know, here we are. Forty nine members later. Wow.

And we'll be at the Des Plaines Theater coming up there the Saturday night with what is Mellon Cougar, Rick? Really? With Mellon Cougar? Yeah. We're up there with. Yeah.

So, you know, it's a lot of work, a lot of drive, a lot of passion, but things it's been it's been it's been growing leaps and bounds. And I think we're pretty close to 7000 followers now. Yeah.

Yeah. So besides yourself, are any of the members original members? That's a great question. I was hoping you would ask that.

I'll tell you what. We're professionals. Rick and I appreciate that.

Rick and I, we go back to we were 18 years old, played in the band called Magi Horn Band back then. And I recruited Rick. I knew he I heard the great fun he sang and keyboard player that filled our need.

And at the time, I was just on Eva starting going down to DePaul to study music. In fact, I ended up studying under Danny Serapin of CTA, Bob Tillis at DePaul University. OK.

And, you know, a year and a half later, we're on the road heading for Florida with a phenomenal seven piece band that I've known Rick all that time. You know, back in 2012, I talked to Rick. He was in three or four different bands.

He's a guy that's talented and huge demand. And when it happened, I finally, finally, it was like, you know, I don't know, finally, finally, he agreed about 2016. Let's jump in and, you know, I feel the feel the huge hold on the band.

Yeah. So it wasn't an immediate decision for you. It was.

I knew you were going to say that. It was about five years of saying, no, I'm too busy. And I can't six years.

Thank you. And I can't believe that you're serious about putting the band together again after 30 years. I said, good luck with that.

And here I am over the last nine years now. Yeah, we've been let's say eight or nine years. Yeah.

Yeah. And we've grown every year. I mean, we battled through COVID like everybody else.

Yeah. But even through those times, we stuck together. We worked at it.

And, you know, it's yeah. Perseverance has paid off. Yeah.

So so what were you doing in that time where you kept saying no for five or six years? I was in between one and five different bands. And I have some friends in Wisconsin. I've been with them for like 37 years.

And so I was playing a lot with them. Then I got some gigs with some bands and it was a band called what Alex and the All-Stars. And if you know them, they were playing pretty regularly.

So I was sitting here playing here and playing there and just having fun, just keeping busy. But my full time job was distributing beauty products. All right.

Yeah. Nexus products. Hence the perfectly coiffed hairdo.

Yeah. I mean, he's got a fantastic hairline. You know, my wife just cuts this.

Oh, no kidding. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a spray shellac. We had a convertible. It came down to eight miles an hour.

Not one hair moved. Him and Jimmy Johnson have the same barber. It's the same product.

We're onto something here. That's right. Anyone looking for keyboard players? So you were a music major in college.

You said you went to DePaul. My ambition was actually I started out as an accountant. OK.

And, you know, I counted beans for one semester. Right. And I went home and at the young age of 18 and a half years old, told my dad, I'm going to go down to DePaul.

I'm going to go to school down there. He said, what are you going to study? I said, I knew I knew what was coming. I said, music.

He said, all right, all right, all right. Don't ever ask me for money. We were on that track.

He said, well, it's all right with me. But here, here's the deal. If you're going to do that, you're going to pay for it yourself.

Oh, yeah. So I went out cleaning buildings at night and got contracts together, hustled, hustled, hustled. Yeah.

And got myself down to DePaul. Yeah. And it was the beginning of a great journey.

It built the relationship I had with my dad because, you know, I had passion for music and he wasn't going to change my mind. And he admired that, but he wanted to see if I had any metal. And I didn't know for sure I did myself.

I just went through the motions of following what I wanted to do. And, you know, here we are, like, it's just, yeah. So, you know, I went on as a music major, but we went on the road a year and a half in.

Okay. So what I had learned down there, I would never trade for anything. It was amazing.

Of course. And a part of me regrets that. But the other part of being on the road with these great musicians, Rick was in the band back then.

We had a phenomenal band, played a lot of clubs, beginnings in Chicago, Rush Up. You know, we did the, you know, the old SOPs. What year are we talking about? I'm going back 72, 73, 75.

Okay. In that area. Right.

Yeah. So, you know, and then we traveled through Florida, played some, I mean, I just, it's just, it's a part of me that, you know, I just wouldn't trade it for anything. Now, were you guys playing the popular music at the time? Were you covering or were you doing original stuff? Some Bee Gees, Chicago and Bee Gees.

And what else was there? Yeah. A lot of Bee Gees. A lot of white band.

And three tenor vocals in that band. We had everybody in that band. Seven guys could sing.

I mean, six, I take it back. I'm saying I could, but they wouldn't let me. Yeah.

So about, you were saying like 74, 75 and you guys were playing the popular music at the time, you're saying? Right. Which I love that era. No, it was the best.

It's like, come back. We talk about this all the time. It's come back again.

And now it's called Yacht Rock. And, you know, you bring up an interesting point there. I've sold that to these members of this band that look, this is what we love to do.

Why change who we are? Let's do what we want to do. Right. And if we put enough in, they will follow us.

Yeah. And you're correct. It's coming back to us.

And it was incredible back then. I mean, we did Beach Boys. We did the Chicago albums.

I mean, it's a blood sweat and tears. We had seven guys and six out of the seven, the drummer didn't sing. Right.

Sang. And so we were doing Beach Boys and it was just... It was incredible. It was amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just unbelievable.

Six strong voices in one band. Yeah. We're right back there again.

You know, in spite of all these years have gone past, we've learned a lot from it. And it's been great. And we've met a lot of great people along the way.

You have to. Right. Right.

Right. You know, about five years ago, I had a guitar player that I've known for quite a while. He called me up one day and he said, hey, are you available to do a Yacht Rock gig this weekend? And I was like, what the heck is Yacht Rock? And he started naming all these bands.

You know, it's from this particular era. So I said, well, I wasn't available. But then year after year after year, I started hearing this term more and more and more.

And I mean, I'm in a 10 piece band myself. And now when people go to our website and and request certain songs or suggest certain it's it's bands like Ambrosia and Toto and Seals and Crofts and, you know, and all these all these bands from that era. It's like everybody wants to hear that music again for whatever reason or another.

And I absolutely love it. I constantly have the Yacht Rock radio station on Spotify or something in my car. Yeah.

And you guys are doing are you guys still doing a lot of that music from that era? We're doing we're sticking to our program. We do a lot of a lot of Chicago. We mix in, believe it or not, some Uriah Heep in there, give her horn chops a little bit of a break.

So they come back fresh. Right. I've learned that it cleanses the hearing palette for the listeners out there.

Absolutely. And we throw some curveballs. We try to keep them, you know, we don't want to be a jukebox where they know what's coming.

Right, right. So we bridge songs. We come back to it.

We move things around, try to keep it exciting. But also, you know, the the tempo of the music, just slow it down and pick it back up, you know, make make changes that can't be anticipated or shouldn't be. Right.

And, you know, it's it's worked out real well for us. You know, but we try to stay in the same genre era. I mean, we do some earth, wind and fire.

Nice. You know, some stuff there. You know, it's not really easy stuff to do by any means.

No. I can't say we are earth, wind and fire. We never will be.

We are who we are. But what we do, we do very, very well. And I think it's evident with our following and the fans that are out there and our bookings that are coming in.

It's been terrific. Yeah. You know, before we get ahead of ourselves, I want everybody to kind of know a little bit more about you guys and who you are.

So take me take me way back. You know, where was the where was the epiphany that said, you know what, I'm talking before you decided you were going to go to DePaul. How old are you? Where were you? What was the what was the thing that said, you know what, music, this is what I want to do.

And I'm going to figure out how to put this into my life some kind of way. Rick, you want to go with that one? Well, I haven't thought about it in 100 years, but I mean, it was the Beatles, you know, and I love Paul McCartney's voice. And I was a little kid and I'd be nine years old and I'd be singing with Paul and this is so much fun.

And then people say, well, you have a really good voice and made a lot of people smile and and made me feel good. I thought maybe I should keep doing this. I got in the high school, started singing more and more.

And and and the reaction of the girls, you know, they weren't swooning, but that's always a great motivator to this day. I thought, how cool would it be to be in a real band, you know, and then I turned 19 and and and what happened with how they got me in the band back in 1974 was I had a friend at DePaul University who was a bass player. And he said, Rick, you got to hear this band that's called Magi and it's a horn band.

And and I said, oh, I could ever play that stuff. You know, and that's complicated. He goes, oh, yeah, but they you know, I want you to hear them.

You know, so he drove me out to Elgin, Illinois, where they were rehearsing. And I heard them. They're doing like, What is Hip by Taylor Power.

It was amazing. I mean, these were just young kids, right? And they were popping this stuff off. And I said, well, they said, can you sing anything? I said, well, not any of that.

And I said, well, can you do stealing? And so I sang stealing and they were all looking at me. And when I hit the high notes, they were like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's the guy. Yeah.

So I thought I was just there to hear their band. It was an audition. My bass player, my friend who was the bass player.

I forgot to tell you that first. I apologize. Yeah, they set my friend up.

And so I had to tell him that they accepted me. I said, I can't play in the garage anymore. I'm going to play with these guys.

So so why the piano? I mean, oh, piano. My sister is four years older than me. She would play piano.

And and and I was one of those kids. I would just bang the keys all the time from high to low and just, you know, just making noise. But to me, it was exciting.

It's a five year old, just a low, low middle. And then I started to take lessons. And and there was something it's like this DePaul University professor said to me, she says, if you have the gift and you give it up, she said, it'll eat you the rest of your life.

And as a young kid, all of us here are these musicians. It's a young part of your life that you there's something there and it develops. And if you give it up, though, you always regret it or you always say, what if, what if, what if? But if you pursue it, yeah, you can make it happen.

Interesting. Interesting. So so tell me about the day that your parents rolled their eyes at you and you said you wanted to be a drummer.

Well, mine's a little bit different than Rick's. I got to tell you. So my brother is eight years old, four years older than I am.

And when he was in eighth grade, he wakes me up. He says, look, I want you to come down. My my junior high school teacher is work at this place called The Hut.

And it was a popular place in Des Plaines. With it was not alcohol. It was a place to go hang out for the kids.

OK. So I said, well, I don't know what this is all about, but I'm going with you. He's pretty cool.

We get on, we get free pop, you know, when you get to the orange crush at eight o'clock in the morning. I mean, yeah. So we go down there and I look up on this little stage and I'll never forget it.

There was a red sparkle drum kit up there from the gig the night before. Right, right, right. And my brother's job was to go to the friends and clean it.

So they're running around cleaning it. I'm not looking. I climb up there and I climb up on a drum stool.

And I mean, I was in fourth grade. Right. And I'm up there looking around.

I'm thinking, oh, my God, this is cool. Yeah, there was nobody else in the room. And I'm looking down at my feet and it was a broken drumstick down.

And I thought, oh, that's cool. I got to pick that thing up with it. And it never left me.

It is what I always wanted to do. That lit my fire in the strangest way. And I kept telling my brother, let's go back to the hut.

Well, I can't get the key. Now we're done with that. I think he got fired because I didn't clean it that day anyway.

At the end of the day, he went down to a pawn shop in Chicago. They didn't tell me what we were doing. He had this old 56 Oldsmobile driving down there clunking downtown.

We parked the car. We go in and he buys a set of Gretsch drums and planted them in the corner and said, there we go. There's your drum kit.

Your brother. My brother. Bought it for you.

Yeah. Wow. Nice.

And so, I mean, we beat the daylights out of those things for the next 10, 12 years. And I finally talked my dad into drum lesson when I was in seventh grade. And it was just a total, total, total passion.

And, you know, in the music era, in the 70s and in the 80s, I mean, we had an incident recently that a gal came up to us and was up at Nichols Red Mill in Woodstock. And Rick comes to me and says, Tom, you got to sit down over here. This guy wants to talk to you.

You got to talk to that guy over there. And I'm like about three 20-year-old guys, 21, 22. Right.

So I'm like, you know, I'm not sure if these are the right guys. So he says, yeah, yeah, yeah. Come over and talk to me.

I says, what's up? He says, I love what you guys are doing. I'm thinking, is this guy yanking me? I says, why? He says, because our generation doesn't have music. It's colloquial.

And it doesn't have what you guys have when you guys are gone. We have nothing. We have nothing.

It's all electronic. We don't even have music in some of our schools anymore. Yeah, that's true.

It's insane. And to see this go by is a total travesty. Yeah, it is.

And if there was anything I could do about it, I mean, Rick and I are doing our part. We just go out and recruit all the people we can. But yeah, we support live music.

And it's just, you know, it's something you have passion for. It's not what we want to do. It's who we are.

Right, right. And it's a big difference. This is who we are.

It's our identity. Those guys are totally right. Yeah.

I mean, it's all, everything's produced on a computer. Nobody even plays an instrument. You know, you need a drum, you find a drum, find a guitar, and that's it.

And a lot of the sounds are sounds that don't exist in nature. You know, there'll be some kind of electronic warble or whatever it is. You couldn't duplicate it without a computer.

How do you do this? I mean, how do you call it? I mean, but you know what it is? And on some level, we have to evolve. You know, there are schools, colleges, universities that have music programs. I actually happen to know a young man who I can't remember exactly where he's going to school.

He's going to one of the schools outside of Nashville. He's actually an electronic music major. He's not a music major.

Electronic music. Wow. Yep.

ECM, I believe, whatever. It's electronic music major. So you're either a music major where you're learning how to play the piano and the violin and learn all this stuff.

Then you've got the electronic music major where your prerequisite is you got to go out and buy a $10,000 laptop. Yeah. Right.

And that's what you need for your major. Wow. And that's what he's doing.

Wow. I mean, it exists. It's here.

That's crazy. You know, on some level, we have to find some way to accept it because it's going to, that's what it's becoming. I mean, recording is all completely digital nowadays.

It costs you four to five times more to go into a studio and record it analog than if you were to go into that same studio and do it digitally. Unbelievable. Wow.

The cost of a reel of tape to record an analog album nowadays is ridiculous. It's hundreds of dollars for a reel of tape. So, yeah.

Oh, wow. So somebody's got to learn how to do it. But we have had, we've had a number of bands in here recently too of these young people.

Early 20s that put these bands together. I run into a lot of them. I have guys come up to me frequently.

We played at the Arboretum. It was one time last year. And Rick says, those guys are up there on the stage and want to talk to you.

So I turn around and I'm like, what's up? Can we come up and look at your drum kit? Like three guys. I'm like, that was me one time. That was me.

That was my red sparkle drums at the hut. Right. I didn't ask anybody.

I just waited till he went near the room. But I mean, they were courteous and they wanted, they were interested in the drums. They wanted to know about the cymbals.

The guy had a drum kit and they were, I mean, they wanted to learn. They were hungry for this. Yeah.

And I'll tell you, Rick and I went out to Sweetwater, what about a year ago? You know, I heard something really encouraging. I didn't realize this. A lot of the instruments they had were backordered.

And I was talking to him like, this place is a monster place. How can it be backordered? He says, you wouldn't believe this. During COVID, people were buying so many instruments that we actually couldn't keep up with that because there was nobody building them during COVID.

And now we have this big, I mean, he said, and I just like, they were buying instruments. He said, yeah, all ages, everything sold out. Yep.

And so there is, there's life on Mars. Yep. I actually, I'm one of them.

I bought a keyboard during COVID because I was going to teach myself how to play it. And my parents gave me a very nice gift for, I think it was for, actually, I think it was for my birthday. So it allowed me to have a little extra money in my pocket at this particular time.

And I was putting together my own band, like a side project and I needed a PA. So I called up Sweetwater and it was the same thing. I said, look, this is what I want.

And they hooked me up with this entire wireless Mackie system, you know, you know, five different speakers, two subs, 24 channel board, the whole bit. I mean, everything, I mean, everything. Right.

And he goes, I'm going to do you a favor. He goes, I know you didn't ask, but I'm going to take 35% off on this for you and make it real easy for you to say yes and buy it right now. We'll ship it out tomorrow.

I'm like, I'm like, I know you did this. I mean, why, why me? He says, because we need more room in the warehouse for guitars. Oh, wow.

This PA was taking up too much room. Wow. I got a place for it.

We need, we need to get these, these, and I understand what he, I mean, by the time this whole thing showed up at one point in time, it would have filled half this room we're in right here. I was like, wow, he got rid of this entire PA for, you know, for almost nothing, included lights and stands, included everything, you know, for it. And I was, I absolutely couldn't believe what they sold it to me for.

We need to shop with him. Well, you know, they'll say you have not because he asked not, but, but no, I actually, I didn't, I didn't ask. I didn't ask.

I said, I was going to, I was going to buy this PA for what the price was on the internet. And he's like, I'm going to make this easy for you. You're buy it right now.

Here's your price. I'll take it. So good as sweet.

That's why they call it sweet, baby. That's right. We call it the music store that goes by no name.

Yes. Unless they want to take out a sponsorship. Sponsorship.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. You're listening to the rock and roll Chicago podcast.

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Hi, I'm Rick Anthony. I'd like to thank my radio brothers, Ray, the roadie and Hollywood Mike for allowing me to tell you about my podcast. The someone you should know podcast.

We spotlight musicians, authors and interesting people. And we like to say we're making a difference one artist at a time. The podcast is heard twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays.

And you can check it out on your favorite streaming platforms and on the web at someone you should know podcast dot com. That's the someone you should know podcast with me, Rick Anthony, making a difference one artist at a time, you know, and kind of going back to the to the youngsters today, a story that I share every once in a while. My my my kids are now in their early twenties.

But when my son was in high school, I think it was the summer of like his junior year. He had a bunch of buddies over and they were in his room, probably playing video games, whatever it was. And all of a sudden I start hearing really cool music coming out of his room.

And it's being played loud. I'm hearing stuff like I'm hearing like Mott the Hoople and I'm hearing Lynyrd Skynyrd and I'm hearing Black Sabbath and I'm hearing just really cool rock and roll music. And I thought automatically I thought, oh, they're playing Guitar Hero.

Right. Well, the music was so good. I opened up the door just to see what was going on.

Now, there was no video games going on. There was no nothing. It was just my son and like four of his buddies all laying around the floor of the bed or whatever and just listening to music.

And I was like, what are you guys doing? We're listening to this music. And one of his one of his friends says, you ever hear this band called Mott the Hoople? They're really cool new band. And I tell that story because, you know, like Ray was saying, we have a bunch of young musicians in here every once in a while and they're interested in the older music.

We had a young man in here last week that sings and plays like a combination of Elvis and Roy Orbison. And he's 26 years old and he sounded fantastic. And these young folks, they're starting to realize that, you know, a lot of this electronic stuff really is just shit.

And I want to hear real guitars and I want to hear real drums and I want to hear real bass and I want to hear musicians jiving off of one another in a studio. Yeah. Enough of this oomph, oomph, oomph, you know, kind of garbage that's going on.

Oh, yeah. Or I'm at home recording a riff. Yeah.

And you're at home recording something and I send it to you. You don't even have to be with each other. You don't.

You don't. I know guys that play on hundreds of recordings a year and they never once go into a studio or meet the person they're doing it for. They just send them a soundbite.

Here, play this for me. Here's the sheet music. And they send it back email.

It's refreshing to hear you say all that. I was not aware of that. Oh, yeah.

I have the same feeling that you do. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Back then it was all going electronic, you know. They need video game music though for video. All these video games.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, they do. I guess there's a place for some of those techie guys, but not on the real stage, I don't think.

But I do tell you the one thing I do like about electronic music and the electronic recording is they really can do wonders with vocals. You know, I've actually done a recording before where all of the instruments were analog, but no, they wanted the vocals to be done digitally because then you can add chorus, you can duplicate the voice, you don't even have to have backup singers, right? All they have to do is change the pitch of my own voice. And all of a sudden, I've got three-part harmonies.

It's called auto-tune. They can make it, yeah. So it's not flat.

Yeah, yeah. So tell us about the other guys in the band, your current lineup. Well, the current lineup is pretty much has been intact with one or two exceptions.

And those were pieces of the pie that were waiting to happen. I knew we had a little bit of a hole where a lot of people listening for years, four or five years, didn't know. But we knew and Rick knew.

We talked about it and said, you know, we've got to find the right person, the missing link. And, you know, we started playing bigger shows and bigger shows and bigger shows. And I finally said to Rick one day, I said, Rick, I think it's time to stop looking.

They're going to find us. And one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle last summer, we played Schomburg Fest. And here we are in front of 10,000 people or plus.

And got some guy yelling and screaming at Rick says to me, you know, we just got finished. We were playing with Blue Easter Cult was on stage behind us. Nice.

Yeah. And so Rick says, there's a guy over here keeps howling drummer, drummer, drummer, drummer. And I'm like, we're on a break time.

I got my family out in front of the VIP section. We're having a beer, we're hanging out, waiting for Blue Easter Cult to open up. And I finally went over and there's a guy hanging sideways on the fence.

I mean, literally on this orange hurricane snow fence. He's hanging sideways and he couldn't get in, but he wasn't going to give up. Right.

And he finally howled over. He says, hey, I want to play in your band. I said, I get that a lot.

He says, no, I mean it. I said, I get that a lot, too. So I finally said, look, this is not the best time.

I mean, there's yelling and screaming. And OK, so, you know, we exchanged phone numbers and it turned out that this guy's, he couldn't be a better fit. I mean, this guy was God sent.

Singer, guitar player. Singer, guitar player. And he can do it all.

And what's his name? Who's he? Should we bring it on? Jerry Cook. Jerry Cook. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. Here, get this, get this.

You talk about a guy that wants to play in a band, not a band, but this band. Yeah. This was the band he wanted.

He saw it. He drove an hour to get to the Chalmers Fest. I said, did you bring your wife? He said, no.

I told her I'm going to see Captain Funk. I've been hawking you guys for the last six, eight months, maybe a year now. And finally, I got a chance to see you.

So I'm coming down. He said, I'll see you later. Now, he drives to rehearsal an hour and 15, hour and 20 minutes each way.

And he said, it's not a big deal. I got a car. To play in a band like this, I would drive at state to state.

Makes no difference, Tom. Wow. I said, you really mean that? He said, I'm here.

I said, OK. Right, right. All right.

And I'm telling you, it's not just the ability of the players, the character of the player. There's a lot going on here. And we know that.

And Rick and I talked about it. And it wasn't just a matter of, hey, let's strap it on and see what you can do with that damn thing. It was, how does your wife feel about it? I mean, we had to do the whole.

Of course. I mean, soup to nuts to the point that, you know, when we talked in private and I shared it with the rest of the guys in the band, I said, let's all talk about this. And after two or three times in, I finally pulled him aside.

I said, you know, let's get serious. And so here we are. His first gig up with us.

We had this play in his theater. We're about 16 rehearsals in, two and a half to three hours each. Right.

We're ready. Wow. We're ready.

We won't go out until we're ready. We said that. I'm excited.

I'm sorry. You're excited. This is, yeah, we're excited.

This is going to be a great year. You know, we play summers. We're a summer.

We're built for festivals. Right. I'm not saying we won't start early and we won't finish late in the year, but this is the first kickoff and, you know, we're pretty well booked this year and we're excited, but nothing more than the first one.

They're all important. Every note is important. Every song is important.

Everything we do up there is important. It's well thought out and we're going to put a show on and we'll just be going up and playing I'm going to have to look on your website and find out exactly what your schedule is. I'm willing to bet that we're playing a lot of the same festivals that you're playing.

It'd be interesting to look at you guys, that'd be a lot of fun. Hey drummer, I want to play in your band. I want to be in your band.

Interesting. Well, that's interesting. Yeah, no kidding.

That kind of brought me up to another question I was asked. You guys kind of came up in that era where horn bands were a lot more popular. There's got to be some crossover.

You have any connections with the other guys from Chicago, from Ides of March? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah, Rick's got... Grassroots, all these people, you know. Rick's got a jacket signed by Jim Peterick.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, he actually, we played a Chicago's Got Talent gig and he was one of the judges. Oh, Jimbo's a big contributor here.

Yeah, I can believe that. He's a big contributor just about everywhere he goes. He's a great guy.

Is his hair still purple? Last I saw it, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think he's kind of letting it go.

I think over COVID, he just kind of let it grow out a little bit. A friend of ours is actually one of his guitar players. He plays in several of his projects and stuff.

So I get to see real-time pictures on his Facebook page every once in a while. But I think he's back to the... The natural. Grayish brown.

Yeah. Yeah, but he's a big contributor to this place. Yeah, that's interesting, man.

Yeah, you know, it takes those kind of people to keep the life and the music. I mean, he lives it. He's the real deal.

But you've got guys like Ron Onesti out there with the O Shows. And I can't say enough about this guy here. I mean, he's always smiling.

He's always got a smile on his face. And to be able to share the stage at one of his events is quite an honor. It's not just... But I told Rick, it's not just luck.

It's when proper preparation and opportunity come together. That's what I call luck. And that's what we've established for ourselves.

And here we are. We're really excited about this. So how can people find you? Do you have a website? Anything like that? Yeah, absolutely.

First of all, we're on Facebook. Like just about every other band under C-A-P-N. Cap'n Crunch.

All right, Cap'n Funk and the Groove Train. We're out of power time. I think it's going to be Cap'n Crunch and the Funk Train from now on.

We've heard a few. But the website is on there. And it's... What is it, Rick? Let's see.

It's Cap'nFunk.net. There it is. I don't go on there that much and look it up. But I, you know, I'm in it off of Facebook.

So yeah, it's like remember your own phone number. Yeah. What's your number? Geez.

Hold on a second. If somebody Googles it, I'm sure they'll find it. It's stitched on my forehead.

Cap'nFunk.net. Eight letters. Right. Where did this name come from? I've got to tell you, in the very early days, before we played one gig, you know, we got seven of us together, plus myself.

And we argued in the driveway of the house I lived for about an hour and a half, about four rehearsals in a row. And one guy came up and said, Tom, I got a great idea. I said, oh boy, here we go.

Lay it on me. Let's go with Cap'n Funk and the Groove Train. And I said, and you're Cap'n Funk? Is that where this is going? He says, no, that would be that guy over there.

I said, I don't think that's going to work there. There's not going to be a Cap'n Funk, OK? We're all for one. We're one for all.

There's no front man. Everybody in this band's a front man. I'm a very huge advocate, and Rick will sure vouch for this.

Nobody stands in front of anybody in this band. Everybody has an opportunity to be on that stage and show their wares. Nobody should stare at the back of anybody else.

So when we set up, we set up for a reason. There's a lot of other reasons, but that's a big one. So anyway, it evolved into Cap'n Funk and the Groove Train.

A couple of guys said, that's catchy. We were up in the Kenosha, one guy. And the guy says, hey, you got to be Cap'n Funk.

I said, why do you say that? He said, I don't know. I told my wife here, man, out of all these bands this weekend, we got eight of them up here at the, what is it, Cheese-a-Palooza over there or whatever it was. And he says, I saw that Cap'n Funk.

I got to go, man. And so that was it. What else is, what else are you going to call a festival in Wisconsin? And I'm sure it had nothing to do with your big hat with a giant ostrich feather.

No, we dress. We do dress when we go on stage. That's good.

We dress up. Yeah, yeah. We go up there.

I tell everybody in the band, look, you know what? You got a job to do up here. It's going to be different than your job over wherever you work. Right.

Wear different clothes. Yeah, that's right. It's stage clothes.

I'll go up there any way you want to, but go up there the way you feel empowered and can put a show on. But in my opinion, I don't think if you walk into a room, everybody should know you're a member of a band. And when you're playing that night, if they don't think you're in the band, dude, you're dressed the wrong way.

Buddy Guy said that exact same thing to me. He said, everybody should know that you are a member of the band the second you walk through the door. And it's not because you're carrying a guitar in your hand or whatever.

You dress intentionally. If you know where you're playing and you know what people dress. OK, take it a step.

So it wasn't just me. No. Funny guy.

Yeah. All right. All right.

Good company. I'll never forget that. I heard Buddy Guy say that.

That was, gosh, over 20 years ago. Wow. Awesome.

Awesome. I'm glad to share that. Yeah.

Yeah. I got some backup and they roughed me up on that. Yeah, yeah.

Rick knows what I'm talking about. These guys walk in and like, wait a minute. Well, you're going up.

No. Where's your clothes? I got them on. I'm sorry.

I asked one guy who was on his way to Boston with some fruit and his truck broke down. You're wearing that on stage. You know, a flannel shirt and dirty jeans.

I'm like, oh, yeah, this is what I always wear. I said, you want to play in the band next week? You're not going to be wearing that, you know? Yeah, yeah. Let's face it.

We're all actors. We're all actors. You got to put a show on.

I understand there's certain music, you know, you do the blue jean and the Hawaiian shirt, whatever, like the yacht music you're talking about. I get it. It's got a theme.

Right. But a real band that's on stage entertaining should at least have that element of a visual entertainment. Of course.

It's huge. It creates that excitement before you even hit the stage. That's why it's called show business.

Yeah. I mean, I have that feeling being in this room with you two people. I mean, it's like starstruck a little bit.

But it's that it's that it's that feeling. It's it's it's that excitement, you know, right? Right. Well, you know, I when I was in sales, I put my tie on in the morning.

I switch one off. Right. And I didn't realize it for years.

I read it in the book. They can grow rich. I had to read it in the college class sales class.

And I thought, you know what? It really is one going off. My wife used to say to me, you know, you're not the same person when you go up the stairs and come down with your tie on and your shirt and go to work. You just don't have the time for me.

I said, I'm in my mode. Right. And then I realized it works for music.

Right. I mean, when I get my my what Rick says, my hat on or whatever, you know, I was thinking, oh, yeah, see, I just realized that, you know, when you get dressed, it's like any pro out there, your football uniform on, you're putting on your baseball cap. Right.

It's showtime. Right. Game on.

That's exactly right. Let's get up there and get after it. Right.

That's so right. It's a great feeling. Yeah.

That preparation to me is half the half to have the enjoyment of doing this, planning it out, putting the show on and somebody comes up at the end of the day and say, you know what? You guys are not just good musicians. The show was excellent. Right.

I can't tell you what part was better than the rest. It was awesome. Entertainers.

Entertainers. Absolutely. People don't realize what goes into it, you know, a lot.

And everything is everything is planned. Everybody thinks that, yeah, there's a lot of stuff that happens that's, you know, on the fly, but not really. You know, you take you always drag a little bit from the previous show into the next show.

Right. You know, and you just keep building on that. And our band, we call it the stick.

You know, it's the stick. You just keep building on the stick. Well, if you're good enough, you have the next show.

Yeah. So you had something to start. Yeah, that's great.

That's great. So what do you guys have coming up? You guys are playing like in the summertime most of the time. What's what's the big one coming up that you guys are really looking forward to? You like that Michigan one or.

Well, we've got actually glad you asked. We've got every show's a big one. Yeah.

How's that for an answer? There you go. There you go. No, they are.

They all are to us. I think one of the biggest ones are doing this year will be on Lawrence Avenue is the the Polish Festival. Polonial.

Nice. That they contacted us back in January. OK.

And I finally asked her. I says, look, you guys are in the city there. How did you hear about us? She's been hawking you guys for two years.

Wow. Well, thank you very much. Yeah.

Put that in front for me. Yeah. So now we signed that one.

That was one of the first early January. You've signed that one. But that's that's a huge show.

But, you know, we're doing several festivals this year. What's kind of what kind of kicks off the season for you? Well, this year it'll be the splines. It's a bit earlier than normal.

OK. But after that, then we're starting off usually around Memorial Day. We'll start out and we usually go up to Michigan and play up to the Strand up there.

It's a great, great venue up there. This year we're doing the Broken Ore in Port Barrington. You ever play there before? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a fun time. It's a fun time. It's a it's a fun group of people there.

Well run place. You know, last year she had some like 282 different bands in and out of there. Yeah.

But we spent a lot of years working to get into there. Right. And I finally got the opportunity and we've never looked back.

But that's been true with a lot of the places we've played. I mean, it's it's a bad habit we've established. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, I'll tell you what we we we played there a few times and now we get hired for all kinds of huge private parties in that area over there now. Yeah. Which is it's a lot of fun playing over there.

All these people that have these fantastic there there are so many neat little places along the rivers and the lakes and stuff around there. We played one. It was this rooftop place that somebody rented out for their wedding.

It was absolutely beautiful. I'll play up there all the time. There's a lot of great rock and roll up through there.

Well, there is. I mean, all over since COVID kind of cooled down. All of a sudden, music's come back with a roar.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we've kind of forgotten that, you know, there was nothing going on. And it was very, very scary, not just in all industry in the whole world.

But, you know, we just there was no music. And we thought, wait a minute here. You know, we're going to keep rehearsing.

Why are we doing all this? Right. And I said, well, this isn't going to last forever. And I kind of like to pick the low hanging fruit.

Yeah. And so I can't say that ever happened. You know, we still had to work hard for it.

But, you know, we kept rehearsing going. And, you know, it's paid off. Yeah.

And how awesome was it when COVID ended and you played your first couple of gigs? Because people were so appreciative. Oh, yeah. Some of them, some of the greatest gigs.

It was so much fun. I mean, I mean, the fans just came out in droves. And like you said, the love that was just radiating.

You could feel it. Yes, you could. That was a fantastic time to be any type of a performer.

I'm feeling it now. I'm reliving it. Yeah.

Yeah, it was. It was magical. Yeah, it certainly was.

You don't know what you're missing until you don't have it. That's right. You know, that's really that effect.

And that was one of the craziest things that ever happened in our lifetimes. Right, right, right. Well, I think it's about that time we say, you know, thanks for coming in, guys.

That was fantastic. Not quite an hour. No, not quite an hour.

But thank you so much for having us on. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for coming out and some great stories.

Well, we've got we got more. Maybe we can get back one day and share those with you. Hey, well, you have no idea how many times we've had people in this studio, multiple, multiple times with like six different bands, right? Yeah, you can pull that off.

You still playing in seven or eight bands at a time. That's something about the time with the harmonica. I'm looking for a glockenspiel band.

He is. He is. He he mentions that all the time.

His goal is to find a band. It's got a glockenspiel. My keyboard has one on it.

You're looking for not a real real thing. Not a real one. Close your eyes.

Well, listen, guys, it has been truly an honor to be here and get this invitation to come up here and talk with you guys. I know Rick was excited about it. I chose him because he's been with Captain Funk longer than anybody.

I've known him since he was 18 years old. We go back a long way. Yeah, share a lot of stories.

You guys have history. I'll tell you. Yeah, a lot of history.

We play a lot of great music and love to see the fan base come out. Captain Funk.net. Yeah. Can I say that? Captain Funk.net. Captain Funk.net. Promote it.

Captain Funk.net. Thank you. You guys are on Facebook, too, you said? Yeah, Facebook. Yeah, Facebook.

Check these guys out on Facebook. Make sure that you like our page so people can then find you easier. Yes.

We'll have a lot. You can look for the page. Look for the train, the crossing pole.

We have a crossing pole that I had someone make. Yeah. Captain Punk on the crossbars.

Oh, OK. Active lights. Put it right on stage.

Got the train whistle cranked up. Should have brought that one with Rick. He could play it for us here.

Yeah, it's his place. We go on stage. Yeah, it's great.

That's great. Yeah, 1872 locomotive coming up a hill. And it's got the whistles, the bells, and it's pretty bad.

You know what? It's pretty cool. I heard that. I thought, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

We got a place for this. Yeah, yeah. We make it fun.

I got to live with this guy. Oh, well. Yeah, I told that Rick the first time I told him.

He said, what? You want a what? I said, I got the train. I got the crossing rail. He said, are you going to haul that thing around on the roof of your car? I said, if I have to.

See, now everybody has a reason to come out and see the band. Yeah. Just to see the train.

Yeah. Hey, you'll hear the train. Billy Joel used to travel with a lead pipe and a hammer.

Did you know that? I did not know that. And that was actually an instrument in his band when he played Allentown. At the beginning and at the end of the song, there would literally be.

I've seen Billy Joel like 10 times in concert. There would literally be a guy with a pipe and a hammer. And he'd do the.

See, now this is where the fun of it. Oh, yeah. I love that.

It's not just, see, it's not just instruments. Every kind of instrument. There you go.

Thank God. Yeah, I love it. Hey, if the Blue Man Group can make drums out of PVC pipe.

All right. Hey, every time I hear a train go by, man, I just want to break the drums up. That's Captain Funk.

Captain Funk. Oh, yeah, baby. All righty, captains.

Thank you again, guys. Thanks for coming out. Thanks for being here, guys.

You guys are fun. Thank you. Well, that was Funkadelic.

Funkadelic, huh? Funkadelic. How did that feel to sing? Funky. You know, you know, those are the kind of guys we could have probably talked to them for much longer.

Yep. Because you can tell there's some musical history in there. A lot.

I don't think we've even scratched the surface with those guys. Yeah, well, they've been doing this for a long time. Yeah.

And over all those years, you're going to have a lot of stories. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm going to get out and try and see them.

Yeah. I bet you, I bet you I'm playing with them somewhere. Probably.

I know. If anything, just to hear the train. Yeah, that's going to be cool to see it.

That's going to be pretty cool to come up with something like that. Yeah. But yeah, there's a lot of fun talking to them guys.

And as usual, thank you for listening to the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. And catch a new episode every Tuesday. See you next week.

7 p.m. The Rock and Roll Chicago podcast does not own the rights to any of the music heard on the show. The music is used to promote the guests that are featured.