A well-known aphorism of the Grammys and other gala award events is, “It’s not winning one, it’s getting the nomination,” which may well be true; and that goes hand in hand with another truism: It’s not the ceremony, it’s the afterparty.
That same logic applies to your typical Raised By Sound Fest, the annual fundraising day of fun and music launched by WYXR 91.7 FM. While fans understandably scoop up tickets to the fest’s headlining concert, with this Saturday’s double-feature of Stephen Malkmus and Kurt Vile selling out quickly, as in years past, many aver that the real capstone of the night is up the big red stairs at the afterparty. And as of this writing, tickets are available.
To be sure, WYXR has curated a rather headline-grabbing post-headliner event. Amidst what is purported to be a 360 experiential performance of projected visuals, afterparty ticket-holders will graze on free food and drink as they groove to a live performance by house music innovator Larry Heard, aka Mr. Fingers, aka Loosefingers, along with his two musical accomplices for the night, Kip Uhlhorn, aka Cloudland Canyon, and Kid Millions of the Brooklyn band Oneida.
That makes the band heavily weighted with Memphians. While Heard is associated with Chicago’s house scene, he swapped his native Windy City for the Bluff City back in 1997 (as reported in the Flyer‘s 2018 profile of him), and has continued a vibrant solo career, with the occasional hiatus, ever since. Meanwhile, Memphis is Uhlhorn’s hometown, though his Cloudland Canyon (with whom I often play, by way of full disclosure) is not typically associated with a “Memphis Sound,” whatever that is these days. The outlier, then, would be Oneida’s drummer and singer, Kid Millions, who nevertheless must feel at home here, given that band’s brilliant performance at Gonerfest 21 in 2024, and enthusiastic reception from the Gonerfest crowd.
It’s one of those unique match-ups of three far-flung musos that tend to produce surprises and delights galore, and it’s that very enthusiasm of fresh collaboration that Larry Heard was likely going for in reaching out to the others. When I spoke to Heard and Uhlhorn via Zoom recently, the first thing to come up was how they planned to pepper Heard’s classic material with some surprising new sounds.
Memphis Flyer: How are you guys approaching this collaboration for Raised By Sound Fest?
Larry Heard: We’ll be playing a lot of my songs, but with some reinterpretation on top of them, and improvisation on top, and things like that. I’ll be singing a few songs and doing some some fun vocoder stuff. We’ll kind of jump around everywhere and maybe even have hints of other songs, where we may not perform a song, but I will include a little acapella or something like that, using trigger samples and other fun things. Maybe play a sample of a line from one song on top of another track, where it awkwardly fits for some reason, you know? A lot of sound effects. Really, a lot of stuff I heard DJs in Chicago doing on top of recorded records, I kind of implement some of that stuff as well. Ron Hardy was the one really known for that kind of innovation.
Kip, I know that among your influences is Larry Heard himself, right? But also the Velvet Underground and a more noisy kind of downtown rock. Are you bringing that element to Larry’s music?
Kip Uhlhorn: I don’t think so. I mean, honestly, it’s just awesome to get to do almost like dub versions of Larry’s music. We’ve kind of done it like Cloudland did that Stan Brakhage score, where we took a little bit from every era, and then did versions or variations on a theme.
LH: I come from a rock background myself, playing [drums] in Yes cover bands, Rush cover bands, Genesis cover bands, stuff like that. So yeah, most of my rhythm section training comes from rock outfits. I was in a couple of jazz things, couple R&B things, but the majority of the time I was in rock bands.
And I was pretty much a fan of music before I was a participant. I brought my first record when I was 10, a Sly & the Family Stone 45, and when you have, like, one record, you may listen to it 1,000 times, so you pretty much study that song inside and out, you know, without intentionally doing it. So just a whole lot of rock was in there. My dad was very heavy into jazz stuff like Count Basie, Sarah Vaughn. My mother was the soul person. She listened to Sam Cooke, Al Green, Jerry Butler.
Larry, all rock aside, you’ve spoken elsewhere about how discovering synthesizers and drum machines in the early ’80s really helped you come into your own, musically.
LH: Yeah, I finally left the last band I was in, and now I had an open door to kind of experiment with. When you’re drumming in a band, if you go over to mess around with the keyboards, you kind of get shooed away back to your drums. But once I was free to kind of tamper with the keyboards, I could really explore that world.
And all the while, your grounding in percussion remained, obviously.
KU: I feel like I’ve learned so much from Larry about rhythm, honestly. Like on all of his songs, the rhythm is the one thing that’s constantly evolving, Once Kid Millions started collaborating with us, and really started going through everything, he was like, ‘The drums are so technical !’ I don’t know, it’s just really impressive.
LH: Okay, I didn’t realize that myself! I was just throwing the drums on as second nature. All my focus is on, ‘Okay, let me do all these other parts and kind of structure everything out.’ So [the rhythm] always gets left as the draft that I started with.
So the drum parts are more offhand for you because you’re trying to juggle the other musical elements?
LH: Yeah. I kind of set that up, get my general feel overall. But then once you put your layers on top of it, maybe you just never come back and do any adjustments, because you’ve set up your sound palette on top of that already, and it feels comfortable. I always follow the Quincy Jones line of thinking: when it sounds good, it is good. Go for when it feels good on parts, tempo, everything else. That’s what he was saying. Where it feels right.
Raised By Sound Fest’s After Party with Larry Heard, Cloudland Canyon, and Kid Millions takes place in the East Atrium of Crosstown Concourse on Saturday, December 6th, from 9-11 p.m. Purchase tickets here.