Interview with Thad Jackson of All Funk Radio Show
Live in concert, Bud Daniel Park, June 6th, 2023
To clear up any confusion, right off the top, All Funk Radio Show is not a syndicated program broadcast on your local radio station on weekend mornings. All Funk Radio Show is an all-star musical act, and their show is a veritable hit-after-hit-after-hit experience that includes the biggest hits of R&B, Motown, Pop & Soul.
The founder and bassist for All Funk Radio Show is Thad Jackson, who comes with the only credential he needs for a lifetime pass into the kingdom of funk royalty — he played bass for Dr. Funkenstein himself, George Clinton.
The group appears live at Bud Daniel Park, June 6th, 2023, and I caught up with Thad for a glimpse behind the curtain of All Funk Radio Show.
Thad, All Funk Radio Show is a big group, so you don’t have to name everybody, but who are some of the performers we can expect to see step into the spotlight on June 6th in Wichita Falls?
All four of my vocalists sing lead, and it’s very rare that you would see four lead vocalists in one band. Even when they had, like, the Temptations or Fifth Dimension, really only one or two voices out of the five was actually carrying lead vocals. So, we’re kinda versatile with our lead and background vocals.
There’s three women and one guy, including Monica Jones and Jennifer Leary, they’ve been with the band the longest, over ten years. Then we have a fairly new girl — well, she’s got three years under her belt — her name is Micki Sweet and she has an album entitled Anxious out right now.
Then, my male lead vocalist is Mr. Jus Epik, if you go to YouTube right now, he has a hit song, it’s number one on the southern soul charts, it’s called Country Girl, about two-million views on YouTube.
All Funk Radio Show plays a huge selection of stuff, from way back to the present day. Are there crowd favorites, that people love, no matter where you go?
All Funk Radio, we’re not really an all-funk band — there’s gonna be some Motown, some disco, some soul and R&B and then the pop songs. We do some Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars, and then we can go all the way back to Motown where we play Dancing in the Street by the Marvelettes.
You’re gonna get about 35 to 45 song titles with our show. This is a fast-moving show, it’s Broadway, it’s a Vegas-style structure, and everybody likes it, from ages 8 to 80.
I’m told All Funk Radio Show is more than just a concert… you work hard to engage your audience, right?
That’s one thing that people come for. As a producer, I stress that anyone can sing karaoke, people wanna see you entertain. I’ve been very blessed with this core. I’ve had several different cores over the last 23 years, but this core right here, their chemistry, just reaches out to everybody.
We’ve done several concert openers for national acts and we’ve been thanked and warned — be careful who you open for because we’re a hard act to follow.
I used to play with the Dells, The Chi-lites, the Staples Singers — all groups out of Chicago. Also, Tyrone Davis, a blues singer. So as a very young kid, I played a lot of stage shows, and then I became acquainted with Dr. Funkenstein himself, George Clinton, in the early 80s and I got a chance to travel as a P-Funk All-Star.
Wow, man, congratulations. That is really impressive.
Thank you. And, George being the mentor that he is, I learned so much from him when it comes to going to that next level, coming out of that garage band, basement band thing, playing the club scene and just trying to put on a decent stage show.
We did a concert at Texas Live in Arlington and when I got home and watched it on TV, I was like “Oh my god. I didn’t know we were this good.”
In truth, who doesn’t love a concert like All Funk Radio Show? It’s a lot like listening to the radio or seeing a Vegas show. It’s all hits — the kind of show where you can sing along to every song — and it’s a spectacle, too. Multiple singers, a horn section, and the sounds of soulful music with heart.
All Funk Radio Show performs a free concert in Bud Daniel Park, Wichita Falls, Tuesday, June 6th, 2023.
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