We Want the Funk: Legendary Drummer Clyde Stubblefield Heats Up Monday Nights
Christina Endres

It’s a Monday night at the King Club and the people have gathered to praise the pulse of a shining red drum set. The dance floor is thumping, the disco ball is twirling, the music is hot and the crowd is nothing short of satisfied because they’ve found the place where one night a week, worries and inhibitions get left behind and an otherwise diverse group of people come together in the name of funk.

Every Monday night, internationally known drummer Clyde Stubblefield, who spent part of his career in James Brown’s band, takes his throne behind the drum set and lays down his famous funky beats for the eclectic crowd at the King Club in Madison. Along with the Clyde Stubblefield Band, Stubblefield creates an atmosphere overflowing with energy and enthusiasm and rooted in rhythm and blues.

The event, called “Funky Mondays,” is a place where a globe-trotting musician like Stubblefield can have fun and play to his home crowd and where music and dance lovers can appreciate the enjoyment of having a renowned musician give a show in an intimate setting every week.

I challenge anyone to find a Monday night like that anywhere in the Midwest,” said Tristan Gallagher, co-owner and booking manager for the King Club. “I mean, it’s going off every Monday night, and it’s Monday night for God’s sake. How can that be? It’s because Clyde is great, the band is great, and they pack a nine piece band onto that little stage and just roll it down.”

Ben Jones, 21, who recently went to Funky Mondays for the first time, said the big sound coming from that little stage kept him dancing all night.

The atmosphere, the band, everything was so intimate, so relaxed and so fun that I had no inhibitions to dance,” Jones said. “I really felt like I wanted to dance to every song, no matter what the tempo was.”

When he’s not propelling bodies from their seats to the dance floor at the King Club, Stubblefield plays at different venues and travels across the country for gigs, playing with other bands or with the FunkMasters, a band he heads with fellow drummer Jabo Starks. Almost every Monday, though, he’s back in Madison, on stage at the little club on King Street. Stubblefield said he enjoys playing at the King Club because he’s very comfortable and can use the night as almost a rehearsal to improve and try new things for his gigs during the week.

“This club is our home,” Stubblefield said. “We love it. We love the owners, we love the employees and we love all the people we work with … This is where we can make all our mistakes and don’t have to worry about it.”

The Clyde Stubblefield Band keyboardist, Steve Skaggs, agreed completely: “This is our homefield advantage.”

Stubblefield and Skaggs have been playing at the King Club for about 20 years. Stubblefield moved to Madison in 1970, after visiting the city twice while on tour with James Brown. After one of those gigs, Stubblefield visited his brother, who at the time was bartending downtown. He liked the people and the pace of the city, and his impressions brought him back permanently about two years later. He met Skaggs years later and the two joined musical forces. Eventually Stubblefield asked for a weekly gig at the King Club, and Funky Mondays was born. Stubblefield said people always ask why he doesn’t live in a bigger city with a larger music scene, and he always has an answer for them.

“I was sick and tired of seeing all the taxis, and honking horns, and cops and people everywhere, and I said ‘I want a place where I can be comfortable and lay my head down and not worry about the noise and look out the door and see rabbits hopping in my backyard,’” Stubblefield explained.

Gallagher says he and his wife, Lisa, who co-owns and manages the King Club, are proud that Stubblefield calls their club home. Stubblefield is known internationally for his funk beats; he has a pair of drumsticks in the Rock ën’ Roll Hall of Fame and is one of the most sampled drummers in the world. Musicians from Madonna to U2, Sinead O’Connor to the Roots have sampled Stubblefield, according to Gallagher.

The beats that Clyde lays down are so great, and you’ll see him playing them every Monday night...When you see someone who's a real pro at they do, it's such a pleasure to watch them doing it," Gallagher said. "You realize you're a witness to greatness."

Stubblefield, however, is quick to point out that he’s not the only one up there making the crowd move on Monday nights. He calls this band his favorite to play with and hopes that someday they’ll be able to tour with him and the FunkMasters.

I might take a job with a band, but it’s a thing where I’m just playing. I’m not trying to improve anything and get better; I’m just playing what’s natural,” Stubblefield said. “But with this band, I try to improve constantly, and when I try to improve, everybody else tries to improve, and then sometimes they outdo me.”

The band consists of Skaggs on keyboard, Bryan Husk on saxophone, Joe Wickham on guitar, Dave Goplen on bass, Alex Leong on trombone, Pete Nelson on trumpet, Paula on congos, and vocals by Carolyn Black, Kari Daley and Charlie Brooks. The group is a mix of musicians who have been with Stubblefield for years, as Skaggs has, and those who have only joined in the past few years. Regardless of their age or time with the band, though, every member has the most important thing in common: They know how to get funky. Skaggs puts the band’s mission each night plainly: “We either kick ass, or we have fun trying.”

This mentality has paid off for the band. The laid back but energetic vibe and high quality music produced by the Clyde Stubblefield Band have created a crowd of loyal followers and are constantly converting new ones. Walk into the club on a Monday, and the fact that the event attracts all kinds becomes obvious. There’s the group of dressed up college girls, the twenty-somethings that immediately hit the dance floor upon entering the club; the business man that begins the night conservatively observing from the back and gradually loosens his tie and begins to jive; and the older fans who come every week to see their friends and keep those old dancing shoes from getting dusty.

Usually when you book somebody else, you get their crowd coming, and the crowd all tends to be the same demographic,” Gallagher said. “On Clyde’s nights, it’s everybody. Black, white, gay, straight, men, women, students, professionals, retirees, everybody. And it’s because of the universal appeal of the kind of stuff Clyde does, the quality of the musicianship.”

From regulars to newcomers, most everyone who comes to Funky Mondays are alike in the sense that they understand just how special the experience is. Nicole Relyea, 26, said she went to the King Club almost every Monday for a year, until a day job required her to cut back a little. She comes for the music, but also for the sense of camaraderie that comes out of it.

There are a lot of regulars that come here,” Relyea said. “You get to know the crowd, and you come to hang out.”

Relyea also said Funky Mondays are unique because they offer a place for people to dance to music that isn’t the typical rap, hip-hop or house music usually played at clubs. On Mondays, she said, there’s everything from funk to soul to R&B to old school rock. It’s clear by the ratio of people sitting to people dancing that much of the audience appreciates the fact that the King Club provides a venue for old-fashioned boogying. The appreciation goes both ways; Skaggs said the band feeds off their enthusiastic fans.

The whole dance floor is crazy,” he said. “It’s incredible Ö we’ve had some great crowds here.”

Jones attributed some of the relaxed but electric atmosphere to the club itself.

The King Club is like no other bar in that it’s just a dance floor and a bar and a stage, and the stage is right on top of the dance floor,” he said. “They seem to want to create this atmosphere, this intimacy between the band and the audience, where there isn’t really a distinction between the two, it’s just everybody having a good time, and some of them happen to play instruments.”

The crowd members were all very different types of people, but once [the band] started playing, it seemed like everybody was extremely comfortable, not worried about the differences between the people, and just listening to the funk,” he added.

Looking out at the crowd from the curved black leather booths lining the dance floor, it’s clear that something unifying is going on. The people on the dance floor have become one pulsing object, the band is enveloped in the groove and life outside the King Club seems distant. Here, there’s just the band on stage, the crowd on the floor and behind it all, Stubblefield at the drums, keeping it funky.