Local funk diva Dawn Silva brings Brides of Funkenstein to Great American
Funk siren Dawn Silva brings an all-star line-up of her band the Brides of Funkenstein to the Great American Music Hall Saturday night.
Born and raised in Sacramento, Silva gravitated towards music at a young age and pursued a professional singing career, becoming a backing vocalist for Sly Stone on his 1975 album High on You when she was 21 and joining the mercurial funk musician's touring band.
While she would also sing on Sly's follow-up album Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I'm Back, when Sly and his band dropped out of a tour supporting George Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic in 1976, Silva would enter the P-Funk fold and embark on a new adventure that would move her to center stage.
Clinton was just beginning to expand his empire, orchestrating record deals not only for both Parliament and Funkadelic respectively, but also getting bassist Bootsy Collins, guitar hero Eddie Hazel and trombone player Fred Wesley and the Horny Horns signed to make their own records overseen by Dr. Funkenstein himself and featuring the talents P-Funk's deep stable of instrumentalists. Silva proved her vocal talents and magnetic stage presence contributing to the hit albums Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome, Hazel's Game, Dames And Guitar Thangs and the concert document, Live (P.Funk Earth Tour). It was only a matter of time before Clinton would tab her as one of the featured vocalists in the new project, Brides of Funkenstein.
Pairing Silva with fellow Sly and the Family Stone alum Lynn Mabry (who would later work with the Talking Heads), the Brides of Funkenstein released their first album Funk or Walk in 1978. Powered by the hit single "Disco to Go," the album went gold. The two singers would continue to perform and tour with P-Funk while getting their own spotlight sets during the collective's marathon live shows. Mabry would part ways with the P-Funk mob over payment disputes and a pregnancy, but the Brides of Funkenstein continued with Silva joined by vocalists Sheila Horne, and Jeanette McGruder for the group's second album, Never Buy Texas from a Cowboy, in 1979.
The band started work on a third album, but financial and creative disputes that began to reveal cracks in Clinton's empire and led to him losing the rights to both Parliament and Funkadelic monikers would contribute to the Brides of Funkenstein splitting up. Despite that, Silva continued to work with Clinton, singing on his solo albums as well as other P-Funk projects. She also became a backing vocalist for the Gap Band, appearing on a number of their records during the '80s. She would also branch out, working with B.B. King, Eurythmics guitarist Dave Stewart and a number of hip-hop artists who were already sampling songs she'd sung on including W.C. and the Maad Circle, Coolio, Del the Funky Homosapien and Ice Cube.
In 2000, Silva broke new ground by releasing the first solo album of her career, All My Funky Friends, that incorporated more modern hip-hop and new-jack swing styles into the sound. More recently, Silva published her autobiography -- appropriately entitled "The Funk Queen" -- that looks back on her early '70s time with the Black Panthers in Oakland prior to joining Sly and Clinton on the road and in the studio. For this rare San Francisco performance Silva and the Brides of Funkenstein at the Great American Music Hall Saturday night, Silva will be backed by an all-star ensemble including current P-Funk musical director and guitar wizard Blackbyrd McKnight, Parliament and Booty's Rubber Band member Gary "Mudbone" Cooper and a variety powerhouse players from Maze, the Gap Band and Graham Central Station. DJ Harry Duncan will warm up the crowd with appropriately funky vinyl selections.
Dawn Silva and the Brides of Funkenstein
Saturday, Oct. 12, 8 p.m. $38
Great American Music Hall