If the politicos occupying Chocolate City ever get around to building a monument on the mall to good ol’ American rhythm ‘n’ blues funk rock, Dawn Silva’s name needs to be etched in bold print on that bad boy. With a pedigree among the best—having served years with Sly and the Family Stone and the P-Funk family—I think of Dawn Silva as the guiding light and longest lasting permanent member of the Brides of Funkenstein. She has not stopped making great music since she first had a fateful connection with Sly Stone in a studio way back when, and she has been singing her ass off and fighting the good fight with her clan of funk warriors ever since. She is sultry and sensuous with golden pipes—off the record, she punctuated our conversation by calling me ‘baby’—still doing work in the studios and on the stages in a time when humans seem to have lost touch with all that is funky. Sir Nose D’void of Funk’s presence looms large in this day and age, but Dawn Silva knows the key. If there was ever a time to remember what we’ve forgotten about the funk to the mechanical workings of the music biz it is now. Dawn Silva sang ‘Starting All Over’ with Lynn Mabry in 1978, so show some fucking respect! We talked about lots of funky stuff… from the plot against the funk, true funk, better living through funk and a grip of her music that should be put out now but for some senseless reason isn’t. This interview by Kurt Midness.

You were singing with Sly Stone early in your career when you got the nod to board the Mothership with Parliament—did you ever have the feeling that you were in the middle of something new and exciting while that was happening? Or did you feel that this was a normal gig for a young singer from Sacramento?
I didn’t feel it at first. I’m one of those blessed artists that didn’t ever have to struggle in my career. I think to understand the journey you must understand the path. I’ll tell you how it really went down when I met Sly. A friend of mine called and said, ‘You wanna meet Sly?’ I said ‘yeah,’ and we went to meet him in the studio. Sly’s sister Rose Stone was hoarse that day and couldn’t sing, so my friend says, ‘Dawn can sing the high notes.’ Sly said, ‘Well, go ahead then.’ I got up there and sang and everything fell into place. After that he said, ‘Welcome to Sly and the Family Stone.’ From there I went out on tour with Sly and Dr. John. Sly always had the cushiest gigs and the best tours. And then he said one day, ‘We are going out with the funk.’ I asked, ‘What’s the funk?’ He said ‘Funkadelic!’ It was supposed to be a long tour and we were real excited to do it. We lasted about two or three weeks before Sly dropped off. We were sandwiched between Bootsy and the Mothership. Being out there with P-Funk, I knew it was a new creative music—the way George Clinton mixed Jimi Hendrix with Sly with Earth, Wind and Fire. Just how he mixed R ‘n’ B with rock music—and I love rock music. I was in the eye of the storm at that time and didn’t know I was leaving the cushiest gig of my life for a whole new thing. George’s market was an all-black urban market. I went from performing to a predominantly white audience to performing in front of a sea of darkness that was 90% men. Loving my men like I do—I was in third heaven. It was one consistent era—I call it a dimension—until finally I was standing out on stage with my own group. One day George said he got the Brides a record deal for Atlantic. George had four females in the band at that time and we sang on all those classic Parliament records like Mothership Connection and Dr. Funkenstein. George was giving his male fans something to dance to. I had no idea how intense it was until after I was out.
What was the concept behind the Brides of Funkenstein debut Funk or Walk?
‘Funk or walk’ meant the same concept as ‘if you ain’t gonna get it on, take your dead ass home.’ Either funk or get to steppin’—walk—we used to say ‘bounce.’ Either funk or walk.
How is the marriage to Dr. Funkenstein now? Are you a bride til death do you part?
Until funk do you part. That’s a whole ‘nother story. Once a Bride of Funk, always a Bride of Funk. Once you are a part of the Mothership Connection you are always in. It’s an extended family. To this day, when I see George Clinton, he says, ‘What up, Bride?’ and I say, ‘Hey, husband.’
Whatever happened to the solo record you recorded for Polygram? Is there any chance of that one ever being released?
I was signed to Polygram, but they wanted to water down my music. I still got it and it still hasn’t been released. It’s 30 songs. Hopefully it will come out one day. That was in 1988. They said the bass lines were too heavy—that it was too funky. That’s how I know when it is true funk. When it is true funk, it is hard to control it. That’s why true funk doesn’t get as much play on the radio as it should. All this new music of today would be exposed for all its weaknesses. The industry can control that stuff because it is weak. That’s why you don’t hear funk anymore.
If you had to write down Dawn Silva’s recipe for a funky life, what would be the key ingredients needed to get started?
First ingredient is peace of mind. For me that means Christ. With God in your life you have piece of mind. My recipe: Christ, a positive environment… no fat greasy fried foods.
None at all?
None… but I break the rules from time to time. Eating soul food is great because it is delicious, but it will take you on up outta here. It has taken a lot of our people outta here. You gotta eat right to keep your creative juices flowing. If you wanna eat that fried chicken and mac and cheese, you have to cleanse yourself with some healthy food and clean living. I believe in ‘always do your good deed for the day and it will come back to you.’ That’s why my musicians whenever I call will do a gig even when it’s not good money. They are like, ‘When and where?’ That’s the way I want to live. The older I get the more it is my form of survival. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Love thy neighbors like you love yourself. It applies to everything in life and especially music. I have to love my music first before I can expect anyone else to love my music. I have to love myself first if I expect anyone else to love me. You have to pay it forward, not backward—that’s how you do it.
Do you have any new music planned for the near future?
Most artists always have four or five albums in them at any given time. Right now I got a double in me now, but I make sure that they are all hits. People tell me, ‘How do you put so much good music on one album?’ I’m not gonna just have a few hits and then some filler. That’s what most music tries to do. I could write ten hit singles and put them all on one album.
You’ve been one of the funkiest—and one of the greatest—American singers since the ‘70s, so how come your first solo album All My Funky Friends didn’t come out until 2000? And on a European label?
No one’s ever asked me that. Let me think—the Mothership ran out of fuel in ’82 and there was nowhere else to land because disco came in with the Donna Summer era and funk got put on hold. I played with Gap Band from 1982 to 1991. I basically became a background singer. It was a good paying gig, so I did that for nine years. Then in 1992 I started working with Ice Cube. He wanted to do a Brides of Funkenstein record, but there was a problem with the legality of using the name Brides of Funkenstein and that never happened. I also did some tours with Bernie Worrell and the Woo Warriers. I spent some time in Brazil gigging with Zola Taylor who was one of the original members of the Platters. That was a seven-year gig and I made a great living doing that. To make a long story short, when I got back from Brazil I was so bored with music on the radio and I wanted to do my own stuff so I could hear something good. I sought out a local promoter to book me some shows. He told me that funk was dead and to bury it and go home and plant some flowers for the rest of my life. Around this time I ran into a friend, D’LaVance, who is a left-handed synth player that had played for the Isley Brothers and we started making the record. For six months we recorded at his studio. I slept on the floor and we just worked. When it came out I got the same story as with the promoter. When I took my stuff to radio they said I was too new for old school radio and too old sounding for new school urban radio. December of 2000 I took my music to George Clinton’s One Nation chatroom and the funk soldiers. We made a website because this was before Myspace and put up four or five songs to listen to and had the album for sale. The funk soldiers came and bought it. The first 300 fans that bought it reviewed it and it started to sell… I sold 5,000 and then 5,000 more and then I got a lot of licenses from other countries, but not the US where the album continues to sell. Maybe it wasn’t meant to happen for me until that point in my career. It was God’s plan. Things happen for a reason.
It seems to me that a lot of American musicians get more props outside of the US. Why do you think that is?
Because the R ‘n’ B market in America has been systematically shut down. Before Tower Records went out of business, I had a distribution deal with them for my album. I would sell them on consignment. My record came in on the tail end of the shutdown of R ‘n’ B. They tried to shut it down and they did a good job doing it. My music was moved into the Pop/Rock section. Not just me… lots of music like Chaka Khan, Earth, Wind and Fire, Gap Band. If you went to Tower or any of the other chains, there were no signs that said, ‘R ‘n’ B/Funk.’ They took it out, and that is my background with Sly and P-Funk. And gospel which originated from America. And I also have classical training. As long as it has that gospel spirit it will sound universal. That’s why I have had success in other countries of the world.
Maybe that’s why Tower went out of business.
It’s exactly why they went out of business! I was surprised that they are calling our show the Long Beach Funk Festival. I can’t believe they used the word ‘funk’—that little four-letter word. That’s why I call my people funk soldiers because we are down there in the trenches keeping funk alive. I’m so bored with music on the radio. It’s just the same recycled top ten over and over. It’s depressing.

VISIT DAWN SILVA AT MYSPACE.COM/DAWNSILVA.

Download: Os Mutantes “Anagrama”

(from Haih out Sept. 8 on Anti-)

Os Mutantes decided everything was possible and tried to prove it across a set of albums that were national classics at home in Brazil but which never even made it to the States until a foreign exchange student accidentally left her copies with the boys in Redd Kross. Low End Theory resident and Blank Blue guitarist Nobody (Elvin Estela) speaks with Mutantes co-founder Sérgio Baptista about helicopters, honesty and the brand-new Mutantes album Haih.

What I love about your new record is that it doesn’t sound like you guys are trying to recreate your old sound—it just sounds like you picked up where you left off.
Sérgio Baptista (guitar/vocals): That’s definitely what I was really wanting to do and I was very happy that I could do it in terms of being able to be faithful and honest to our legacy and not looking back in any way—no way. We are in the 21st century and we are different people now and it’s very important for us to be honest and play what we feel. I think we were very blessed in being able to do something I consider is honorable to our legacy.
That’s an incredible approach to recording, especially for a band that hasn’t put out anything in a while. This is a perfect addition to your discography—it doesn’t stand out as ‘the modern record.’ It’s definitely just a timeless record.
If you don’t put yourself in danger of being spit upon, then you are not really alive. Then it’s just going to be a mock. And we owe so much to the people and the kids and everybody that we have to at least open up our hearts and souls the best way that we can to be naked in front of them and let them look at us. Now we are different—we are fatter, we are older—but that’s who we are. That’s how Mutantes would sound now and I think with all the flaws and wisdoms that came with age—I think that’s the most important thing that you have to do as a producer or artist is basically to just assume all of it and be ready to expose yourself. That’s basically what an artist has to do.
Put their balls on the line.
For sure. That’s what we always did and it’s what we’re doing.
What’s the point of art if there’s no risk involved?
Exactly—it would be sad. I think it would be like spitting in the place where we eat. We are able to see how important these people are and how much we owe them. What we can do is be as completely honest as we could and put our hearts the way they are.
You talk about being a lot older but your voice hasn’t aged a bit—what’s your secret to eternal youth and voice?
I’m not older; I’m younger for a longer time. You cannot lose your child inside. If you let your child die then you are in trouble.
I wanted to ask about this urban myth about your guitars—you had a fuzz guitar with each individual string going to its own fuzz pedal?
Yes. All the electronics are inside of it.
Each string had its own processor?
Yes. When I was with my brother and Rita only, all the job of texture and solos came down to myself. I had to fill in all the sounds and I had a need for sound. We lacked harmonies and I wanted to be able to play chords with fuzz, but if you play a chord with just one fuzz you have intermodulation and you have a bad sound and you cannot get the chord clean. So I spoke to my brother who was building the stuff, and he said the only way I can do this is to do one pickup per string and then through a fuzz individually and mix all of them together and I said, ‘OK, let’s do it.’ So we did it and it sounded great.
I saw Mutantes in L.A. in July 2007 and my favorite part of the show was when you were pretending there was a helicopter above the audience with the guitar.
All improvisation. It was basically the sewing machine pedal that I used on ‘Bat Macumba’ but in a different manner. It normally was mechanical but then we made it possible to use digitally. It was impossible to use that thing more than five minutes because it was connected to the engine of the sewing machine.
It was actually running through a real sewing machine?
Oh yeah. The guitar was coming in and out of it. With the axis of the engine and how you could vary the speed, he would cut open the sound of the guitar extremely fast and this would create several different harmonics and things that make that crazy sound. It was something that was not practical, so now in the digital era we were able to produce this in a way that it is possible to play with it. So I’m using a lot of it in the record.
Did you ever think of manufacturing and making it widely available to the world?
Yes, definitely. The name is Green Devil. Because the sewing machine was green.
I would definitely use a Green Devil pedal if you ever put one out.
I’ll do my best—definitely. So you think I should go for a helicopter again?
You haven’t done it since that show?
No. Ok—I’ll do it again.
I thought it was hilarious. I kept looking back, I was like, ‘Man, this is the greatest showmanship right there.’ You should have been the guy making guitars for kids in the ‘60s—we’d have a lot cooler stuff like sewing machine effects pedals.
Yeah—twenty years before Ovation we were using a piezo on the bridge. If you hear any of those songs like ‘Dia 36,’ that crazy sound of guitar that sounds a bit like an acoustic—it is a piezo electric.
‘Dia 36’ is one of my favorite songs by you guys.
I think it was one of my best lyrics. It was from an American guy who came here and I made the lyrics.
Who was the American guy?
It was John something—God, I don’t remember. He was a crazy guy—like albino, like the brothers Edgar and Johnny Winter.
And he was the original writer of the song?
He was—when we played, he just entered the stage and he was totally out of his mind and he was screaming and it was great. It was really amazing. I think he wrote the song on a dulcimer and I really loved his song. I got it and I wrote the lyrics for it and it was great.
To me you guys are one of the premier psychedelic bands that ever existed—I really think that it’s amazing that thousands of people today can relate to a psychedelic band from back then. What do you think that says about psychedelic music from that era? In history, it might be seen as a flash in the pan because it was only five years of music. But so much came out.
It’s amazing for us because we didn’t know that we were psychedelic or anything like that. There was no psychedelia at the time, at least not in Brazil. The first album came out in ’68 and there was no drugs involved in any of the albums.
So to you guys, you weren’t making psychedelic rock—you were just making whatever you wanted to make?
Yes. It is amazing that it fell on the slot. The way that we used to gather information was like a kaleidoscope in pieces and then from the flower power, we just got the flower not the power. We didn’t even care about the power—we just loved the flower. You know the girls and the free love and all the beauty and the colors and the music—we didn’t realize it was Vietnam behind it.
In America it was definitely about the protest, but for English bands it was more about the girls and the flowers. What bands from across the world were influencing you guys down in Brazil?
Everybody. Sly and the Family Stone for sure. Beach Boys, Mary Ford and Les Paul, Jimmy Smith, all the operas. We had a huge and very big spectrum of music which we drank from. Like Sarita Montiel from Spain and all the mariachis from Mexico. We were into everything—all the cats, Barney Kessel, the Ventures, the Shadows, all of them.
And it all combined to create what you wanted?
Oh yeah—take my solos. They were very Ventures-oriented at the beginning. I think the great thing about it is that all the record companies and all those people were into the music. The money came much later. Nobody was worried about being a star or selling a billion dollars in records. I think people were just making music from the heart and the honesty that we had in doing this—I think that’s maybe what draws people to listen to us.
Do you think that people can make music from the heart again today?
Oh, for sure. We’re doing it. I think this new album definitely. There is no thought behind it—this is just the music playing the way it came to us in terms of inspiration and everything. There is no gimmick behind it.
You said you always had a need for sound—where did that come from? If you guys weren’t doing psychedelics like the English bands, what drove you?
I think it probably came from NASA. I was raised with like the X-15 and the X-2 and knowing all the names of the cats—like the guy who broke the sound barrier. All those things were so important for us. I heard the Sputnik—we put on the shortwave and listened to the ‘bleep, bleep, bleep’ and it was an amazing era. All of this—the technology were so much in our veins, and all these things were happening so we always were connected to it. Especially because my brother was such a genius and proud of making all this stuff.
So it was space and the technology of the time?
All the science and technology and all the avant-garde things that were going on at the time. There was Picasso and all of this was influencing us a lot. Modern art and all this was a must for us. I think that was translating to sounds.
How long did it take to record this album?
It took about a year. We took our time—we didn’t want to rush everything. Especially because of everybody’s schedule and the bunch of things that everybody was doing and of course the beginning of the year was very had because Arnaldo left the band and we took our time.
What does the name mean?
It’s a Shoshone language. It means ‘raven.’ I was passing this crow in France and trying to get its picture and I got his picture of him looking at me looking like he was saying, ‘Get ready ‘cause you’re next.’ He was pissed with me. And I got the crow photograph and I was watching a movie about the Clark expedition and the Shoshone thing—I’m very involved with this area because it was such a magical place in America. I started to know of Nevada as such a great state. You go to Las Vegas and you forget the Strip and all the mountains are so magical and you have the fantastic lake and you go thirty miles to the other side and there’s snow—then you’re in the desert. You can feel the Indians there. You can feel the energy of America—which was great. I saw the documentary about the Clark expedition and there was this girl who I don’t remember her name—Sacajawea? She was very important symbol for women as an endeavor or entity and she saved the journals of the expedition and she was the one who guided the expedition—which was great. And so I started fooling around trying to get a name in Shoshone and I found a dictionary on the internet of Shoshone. I wanted to do like ‘Lightning Crow’ but the lightning word was like ten words together—it was huge. I couldn’t even pronounce it, so I just had ‘crow.’
You would have had the longest album title ever if you used the whole thing. Almost longer than Devendra Banhart’s first record.
Yeah—probably.
The most amazing thing about your show last year was that it was completely sold out—but your records were never released in America when they came out.
It was something that was really amazing to me, too. When we played in 2006 at the Barbican and one month after playing there we booked about 8 shows in America in the most brilliant places like the Hollywood Bowl and Fillmore and the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago—and we hadn’t played one note. That was really amazing. Now having all these things happening and playing in America and having so many people that are involved with us, it is something that makes you very happy and humble about it because you know that it was so spontaneous—it’s a beautiful thing to see.

OS MUTANTES WITH DJ NOBODY AND BUYEPONGO ON FRI., AUG 28, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD, ECHO PARK. 8PM / $28-$30 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. OS MUTANTES’ HAIH RELEASES TUE., SEPT. 8, ON ANTI-. VISIT OS MUTANTES AT MUTANTES.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/OSMUTANTES.

Download: Ya Ho Wha 13 “Treat You So Right”

(from Magnificence in the Memory out June 23 on Drag City)

Ya Ho Wha 13 were the band formed out of the pre-dawn practice sessions that served also as morning meditation for the Source Family, the L.A.-area religious sect that ran their own health food restaurant during the ‘70s. They released nine albums but recorded hours of material. Drag City has collected nine unreleased songs for this month’s Magnificence in the Memory. This interview by Dan Collins.

How did you get your name, Isis?
Isis Aquarian (Source Family historian): It was the family name given to me. Father said that the names we were given were for several reasons—either because that’s the name that we needed to learn from, or that’s the name of who we were, or that’s the name we needed to get qualities from. In other words, whatever name we had, nobody could go on an ego trip about because you never knew why you had that name.
You never had an ego trip about being named after an Egyptian goddess?
No, not really! I always related to her, though. Manly P. Hall from the Philosophical Research Society—who did Secret Teachings of All Ages—was a mentor to Father when he was Jim Baker, before he became Father and started the Source. And we had gone over to see Manly P. Hall in the early days, and he handed Father a list of names, and he said ‘These names are the names to give the people in the Family.’ And we went back and people either picked what name they liked, or Father gave them a name. And somebody gave me the name Isis, and I didn’t relate to it. I said, ‘No, I’m not going to take that name!’ And Father was standing there and he said, ‘No, that’s your name.’
What was your original role in the Family and in the Source?
I had known Father as Jim Baker, when he had his other restaurant called the Old World. He had three restaurants—the Aware Inn, the Old World, and he opened up the Source. And they were all within, I would say, four or five blocks of each other on Sunset Boulevard. And they were all very famous. And he had his first two as Jim Baker. I met him, he had the Old World, and he was living with his wife of the time, Dora, a French girl. And I became friends with Dora, and I hung out at the Old World. And I knew Jim, but we never seemed to really connect, which was very strange, because he was very good looking, and he was the kind that would flirt with everybody. But there just seemed to be a hold on us at the time. But then I went my way, and he went his way, and I ended up living with Ron Raffaelli. He was a famous rock photographer—he was known as Jimi Hendrix’s photographer. That’s how I met him. I was asked to go on a shoot with Jimi Hendrix, and we became engaged. And I had my life at the studio with him for a couple years. And I had heard that Jim had opened up the Source, and was being known as Father, and was starting a spiritual family. We were looking for a group of people with long hair that looked like Jesus, because we were doing a poster for Jesus Christ Superstar. And I said to Ron, ‘I know where there’s a bunch of people running around looking like Jesus. They’re at this place called the Source! I’m going to go down there—I’ll get us some models.’ So I drove down to the Source, and oh my god, the place was incredible. As soon as you stepped near it, you knew something was happening. And I stepped onto the patio, and I asked for Jim Baker and somebody said ‘Oh, you mean Father.’ And he came walking out, and he was like 6’3’, and he looked like Moses. He had long hair and a beard, and he was no longer the Jim Baker I knew. And I was immediately smitten, as they say, and he just embraced me and said ‘I was wondering how long it was going to take you to come home—to come back.’ And I basically forgot what I was even doing there. And he invited me to come to morning meditation the next day, and then I basically never left. So I just walked out of my home life and became a full time part of the Source family.
How old were you?
I was in my late twenties. A lot of the kids were sixteen, seventeen, and in their early twenties. I’m not saying I was the oldest one there, but I had also known Jim Baker so I wasn’t intimidated by him. Most people were finding their guru and their masters, and I found him as my earthly spiritual father, for sure. But I knew that I had a destiny with him. I basically became his right hand—that’s what he called me. The Family had other names for me. ‘Bulldog’—you know there’s a bulldog in every family. And ‘hatchet lady,’ ‘dragon lady’…
Did you like those nicknames?
It didn’t bother me, no. In fact, ‘Dragon Lady’ was kind of endearing! You had your role, and you played it out, and Father always had my back.
When did the band Ya Ho Wa 13 start?
We had musicians in the Family that would always gather and play. We weren’t doing anything ‘musically,’ but we did realize we had some very talented musicians. Music seemed to be playing all around the house. And that was the thing to do back then. Everybody carried a guitar. It was like music was the new language. And one day I think Octavius came in and was talking about being a drummer, and a lot of people had been musicians, and just gave it up when they came in—whatever any of us were, we gave up when we came in. It was of no necessity at that point. And I just remember Father one day saying, ‘Wait a minute. I have a drummer. I have a guitar player. I have a bass player. We have singers. We have a band. Let’s do some music!’ So, bands started being formed to see what we wanted to do with them. And at this point, Father wasn’t really in them—he was just having fun seeing what we could do. And because we were very famous, and everybody came to the Source, all the movie producers, directors, musicians—John Lennon was there all the time—they all came there. So we figured, ‘Well jeez, we can just start letting people hear it and see if we can do something with it.’
I heard you would play every day from 3 to 6 in the morning! When did you sleep?
Right! That was when we gathered for morning meditation. Father would be so full of energy and so excited, and he would say, ‘Let’s go to the band room!’ And the band room was just a converted garage off the meditation room, and speakers had been hooked up, so no matter what was happening, we could all hear it. Because we all couldn’t fit in the band room.
A lot of your movement’s spiritual beginnings and influences have been chronicled. But what seem less well known are the specifics of the musical side of things.
He formed Ya Ho Wa 13 and started playing with it, and that was like his signature when he started playing with the Family. It’s not like he could play or sing. It was another way of morning meditation. It was another way of his talking about the wisdom teachings. He often said, ‘Long after I’m gone, my teachings will continue because of the music we’re doing now. Music has no barriers. Everyone understands music because it’s a soul thing.’
One of the interesting things about your band is that, given your spiritual and cosmological underpinnings and your emphasis on improvisation and spontaneity, I was expecting you to sound like Sun Ra or something jazzy. But you guys are a rock ‘n’ roll combo.
Very much so. When the band first now started getting back together, I was wondering how it was going to work. Because when you have the head guy no longer there, how does that work? And I know the public’s been going on the albums that had Father in it, like Penetration. So when the three Brothers got together and decided to continue playing as Ya Ho Wa 13, it was interesting to see how that was going to play out: Octavius, drummer, Djin, guitar, and Sunflower, bass.
Was there ever fighting about the music?
There were disagreements, but we never got into bickering or arguing. The short time we lived together was so incredible because we lived in a space and time out of this reality. Certain things didn’t exist that exist for us now that we’re back. We lived in a kind of free zone where certain rules and regulations didn’t exist. We related to people’s souls, not their personalities. When the Family dispersed—and now we’re trying to deal with each other again thirty years later—we’re just starting to relearn those techniques. In 2001, we had our first big reunion, and the last ten years we’ve just been dealing on a social level with each other and trying to be nice. A lot of stuff has come up that we never got to work on, because we all just left. It was like The Day the Earth Stood Still. We looked around and nobody was there.
I remember reading that the Beatles were a big influence on the band.
I think definitely because that’s what the band grew up with. The Beatles were very cosmic. They had stepped over into spirituality, and they were given incredible messages.
Were there specific Beatles songs that you wanted to emulate?
No, once the Family was formed we didn’t listen to other people’s music.
You never stepped into a discotheque or club and heard another band?
The only time that happened was in the early days when we did try stuff like that. We got booked at the Whisky a Go Go, and we walked into the Whisky a Go Go in our robes and our long hair—and we did get laughed at! But when they got up on the stage, everybody was quiet because they could sing. They had some good music happening.
But you must have noticed that at the same time you were making this music, bands such as Pink Floyd, they were doing the same…
Oh, yes, absolutely! I do know that we opened the Crater Festival in 1976, sunrise, here in Hawaii for the 200th anniversary of America, and we opened for Sly and the Family Stone. We asked for that slot, and we led the thousands of people in Diamondhead Crater in star exercise, and we got them chanting.
Do you think if any band forms, even if it’s just four or five people, that something spiritual forms?
Music seems to touch the largest amount of people at one time than anything I know about all over the world. It has no barriers, it has no race, it doesn’t distinguish between color, religion, and nationality. You can put a song on and put it out over the airwaves, and thousands of people, their soul can get out of it whatever it gets out of it.
Contemporaries of yours in the avant-garde, such as La Monte Young and Angus Maclise, have kind of said that there is a spiritual plane you can achieve with pure musical tones. Was there a certain way of playing for you that was more in tune with your spiritual quest?
We were into frequencies. Like—the F note is the sound of nature. And the fact that vibration, if you tune into like a F note and another F note comes before, then you vibrate. Like a tuning fork. He tried that with the gong and the kettle drum. We had the gong from Dr. Zhivago—the movie! He bought it and we still have it, and it’s huge! Often in morning meditation, when we weren’t even doing anything with the music, he would have us all go into meditation, and he would do the gong throughout chakras because the gong had the frequencies—all the frequencies of the chakras.
There was kind of a no-drug policy, wasn’t there? Despite your band being considered psychedelic?
I think marijuana, since we don’t consider it a drug—that is probably being used.
But psychedelics like mushrooms or LSD?
No, no, we didn’t do it in the Family, and as far as I know, it’s not being done now. The family dispersed and we all went our ways and created a new life with new members, and so some thirty years later, we all are not on the same page and we are not responsible for what anyone does or does not. As human beings now out here on our own, it has made it somewhat harder to ‘ante up’ as they say.
Sky Saxon, who joined the band later, has been known to have some drug issues. Did he have those when he was in the band?
Sky Saxon was an entity unto himself. He does his thing. I’m talking about Ya Ho Wa 13.
Whoa! Are you saying the album he recorded with Ya Ho Wa 13 was outside the realm of what you consider their music?
Um… well, during the Family days, after Father left and said he was no longer going to be in the band, he invited Sky—‘Arelick’ was his family name—into the band. And they renamed the band Fire Water Air. And it either didn’t do anything, or we moved. We didn’t accomplish or finish a lot of what we did because we would move and go on to something else, and it was disruptive of what we were doing.
Was Sky part of the Source?
He was. He would kind of come and go, though. Father loved him, but he was always just Sky! The way he is now is the way he was back then. And I think Sky does a lot of things that the rest of us don’t do.
Was there a conscious decision about which instruments to use in the band?
No, that’s just the instrumentation that the band played. And I think it’s the basic formation of a band that you have drum, guitar, and bass, right?
Definitely in rock ‘n’ roll. But did you ever introduce any other instruments?
I think they brought in Pythias for a while on guitar, and Lovely with a violin. Lovely was Andre Previn’s daughter. That was one of the forms of Ya Ho Wa 13 that Father was trying to put together. And they brought in a couple other brothers—Home, who sang and played guitar, and Rhythm, who played piano. After we left L.A., we tried different forms of the band, when we moved to San Francisco and moved to Hawaii.
Brian Wilson considered himself a very spiritual songwriter, and made many songs about Hawaii. You still live there now! Is there a spiritual purity there?
There was to us. Hawaii is very clean. The air is clean. We don’t have pollution. We have nice weather all year. It’s called paradise for a reason!
Were you happy with the Obama presidency being that he was a resident of Hawaii?
I don’t really ‘do’ politics, but as far as being a local Hawaii boy, he’s right here where I live—Kahlua. When he stayed here, he was just like three blocks down the street. We saw him on the beach all the time.
Did he go surfing?
He tried to, but the Secret Service wouldn’t let him surf anymore!

YA HO WHA 13’S MAGNIFICENCE IN THE MEMORY RELEASES TUE., JUNE 23, ON DRAG CITY. VISIT YA HO WHA 13 AT YAHOWHA13.COM. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON YA HO WHA 13 AND THE SOURCE FAMILY, SEE THE SOURCE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF FATHER YOD, YA HO WHA 13 AND THE SOURCE FAMILY BY ISIS AND ELECTRICITY AQUARIAN AVAILABLE NOW FROM PROCESS MEDIA. PROCESSMEDIAINC.COM.