In this heartfelt episode Musicians Reveal with Joe Kelley episode, Dawn Silva opens up about the devastating loss of Sly Stone — a legendary figure in music and a deeply personal mentor and friend. She shares moving stories from their time together, highlighting the profound impact he had on her life and career. As a key voice in funk history, Silva reflects on how Sly’s revolutionary sound shaped not only her journey but the entire music industry.

We also explore Dawn Silva’s powerful new book Queen of Funk, which offers an unfiltered look at her experiences with George Clinton, P-Funk, and the Brides of Funkenstein. Silva speaks candidly about her place in the cultural legacy of funk and the challenges she’s faced as a Black female artist in a male-dominated industry. This episode is both a tribute to Sly Stone and a celebration of the enduring power of funk music.

🎙️ Musicians Reveal with Joe Kelley is a podcast featuring legendary and emerging funk, R&B, and Prince-associated artists. On air since 1982 and now spanning five decades, the show was personally spotlighted by Prince on his website in 2004. He also gifted us the One Nite Alone box set in 2002 — before any media outlet.

Hi, I'm Dawn Silva of the Brides of Funkenstein, Parliament, Funkadelic, Slime, the Family Stone.

Today I am with Musicians Reveal with Joe Kelly, one of my favorite DJs, and it's such a pleasure today to be on his show.

Welcome to Musicians Reveal.

I'm extremely excited to today because we have a legendary performer, singer, dancer, author, Rock and Roll hall of Famer, Brides of Funkenstein, Parlette, P. Funk.

She does it all.

She has done so much.

We welcome.

I think it's 21 years since we last spoke officially.

That's crazy.

Dawn Silva's in the house.

How you doing, Dawn?

Hi.

How you doing?

Joe Kelly.

Thank you for having me on your show today.

Yeah.

You still up in Northern California?

I am.

I'm still in Sacramento, Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, we're in sec.

We moved to Saratoga Springs, New York.

Okay.

So you're not in.

I think the last time we did an interview, you were in Connecticut.

Connecticut, yes.

Yeah, we moved up here three summers ago, so it's nice.

So, yeah, I think people played up here.

Greg Boyer was telling me he broke his foot up here.

Oh, no.

Long time back.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So go ahead.

A lot of history here.

A lot of history.

A lot of history.

Yeah.

There's.

You were speaking of.

Well, first of all, I wanted to express my heartfelt, you know, sympathy to you and the P. Funk and Sly Stone family on Sly's recent passing.

And, you know, I think thanks for doing.

Spending time with us.

But it's got to be awful tough for you going way back with Sly.

Yes.

I've lost my big brother as we go back, what, 50 years.

And so since I was just a baby, and I was very young, in my early 20s, and so I wasn't just touring and recording with him, and he wasn't just my mentor.

He was basically my best friend.

And he actually saved my life on a few occasions.

You know, I mean, literally.

So for him, just, you know, to lose him, it's.

It's numb.

It's.

It's.

You can't even put it into words what it's like to lose someone like.

Like Sly Stone.

And I know the entire world is in a lot of pain.

Yeah.

And I've noticed over the last week since he's.

Since his passing, how Social Network is just showing so much love for him.

And I just can't help but thinking and wishing that he was able to see that before he left here.

And I knew he was loved, but not so much as.

As I didn't have a clue on how much the world loved him.

And not just the black and R B market, but.

But all genres, all walks of life, all different types of people everywhere.

They just loved him dearly.

So that was.

That was a great, great loss.

Great loss.

And it's interesting, the musicians who weren't even affiliated with Sly at all, they have expressed exactly what you said.

Like, this one hurts this, you know.

Yeah, well, he said he inspired just hundreds of thousands of people.

You know, singers, vocalists, musicians, writers, you name it.

I just.

He was so influential.

I mean, the whole catalyst, the inventor, the pioneer, innovator, pioneer.

Those words are just so tiny compared to how huge he was.

You know, how big he was and what he gave to us.

And I wrote about it in my book where I said that Sly didn't change R B and black music, actually.

He changed the look and the sound and he changed modern music, period.

Changed it, which totally changed the entire game.

So I. I believe that he.

He's.

His praises should be shouted out throughout the world.

And I hope that the.

He will go.

He'll still get his flowers even with.

With him being gone, because his music, of course, will.

Will outlive us all.

I always tell my wife thank you's got to be in.

In the playlist when I go.

When I Wide Apart.

That's one song's got to be there.

Well, every.

Every cover band in the world is.

Knows.

Thank you or Dance to the Music.

And you can't.

Yeah.

Go to it.

You can't go see a local band without that being in their set list.

Right, Right.

So, yeah, he's.

He's influenced and touched the hearts of hundreds of thousands of people.

He did.

And speaking of the book, which is a voluminous book.

How many.

It's 523 pages or so, right?

It is, yeah.

Funk Queen will have the links where you can buy it directly from Dawn's site.

Dawn Silva dot com.

And we got a little picture of you in the back on our computer.

Yeah.

So you mentioned Sly.

We'll touch on a little bit about your beginnings in the studio with Sly.

We talked previously that you were outside his rehearsal studio listening or something like that.

But you got in the studio and asked to do vocals on Crossword Puzzle.

Right.

That's funny that you mentioned that song because I was going through some old.

A box of stuff from Sly and I actually slide gave me a snakeskin trench coat.

Right.

I mean, he was the type of person that would give you the shirt off his back.

Right.

He Gave me a monkey coat, you know, straight monkey coats.

And somebody stole it at the show.

But I still have that snakeskin on trench coat that comes all the way to my ankle.

I mean, it's really just soft.

It still is from the day gave it to me.

And then I was running around and going through my.

My little boxes of little Sly stuff, Stone stuff.

And then I found these, my memorabilias, and I found this gem.

And so you just mentioned that first.

And so I really want to have that.

That, you know, put it in a frame.

Right, I do.

That's.

That's.

So is it the same song on both sides or.

It is.

Well, actually, it's two different mixes on both sides.

Right, okay.

And that's what.

This is epic.

CBS did this.

Okay.

But he.

Sly gave this to me years ago.

This is a demo of it, Right.

And I've had it.

Not for sale.

As it says on here.

You don't even see these anymore.

Right?

Yeah, yeah, I used to get those all the time.

Yeah, yeah, I know you did because you had your radio station.

Yeah, yeah.

I along to a DJ record pool and we get like 10 records.

Have to give the reviews and everything, so.

Yeah, that's a gym.

I'm gonna hold on to that one.

Right.

Well, you definitely deserve it.

I mean, that was your first official recording, right?

That was my first official recording.

There was a friend of mine that lived in Sacramento.

He was a percussionist, and his name was Michael Samuels.

And he was in a local band here that was actually pretty big.

The number one local band in Sacramento at that time.

And I believe that Sly actually was looking at them so.

Because he had hired some of their band members to when he did his renovated Family Stone shows.

And one of the musicians asked me that I want to go down to Sausalito and meet Sly.

And I was like.

Because he was doing a new album and he needed background singers.

So I was like, who wouldn't want to, you know, meet the great Sly Stone?

So we drove down to Sausalito, we went to the Record Plant, and I was sitting in the studio.

And by chance, Sly's baby sister, Vette Viola Stewart, she.

She was singing with little sister at the time.

And there was the three girls around this microphone, and they were putting background vocals on another track that was called Hoboken, New Jersey.

They were singing on that song because I sang on two songs that day.

Not only Crossword Puzzles, but that one.

And so Vet Sly kept saying that he wanted some top notes on the backgrounds and Vet said that she was hoarse.

Okay, so Michael said out loud, well, Don can sing those top notes.

So I'm looking at Michael like he's out of his mind because, you know, I was petrified.

I was.

As I was in.

I was just in shock.

I was numb.

I couldn't believe where I was.

And so Slide kind of looked at me and said, yeah, yeah.

So what you waiting on?

I was like, me.

I was like me, yeah.

He said, yeah, you.

So I was like, okay.

So I walked up to the microphone and they.

The tape started and I sang my part like my life depended on it.

And when that session was over, Sly walked up to me and said, welcome to Sly and Family Stuff.

Wow.

What was your parents reaction when you went home?

My mother wasn't too happy about it, you know, because she didn't.

She didn't want us, her kids, in the music industry.

My mother dibbled and dabbled a little bit in the industry herself.

Long years ago, she had a dream to sing and be in the music industry.

She found out how cutthroat it was, right.

So she just didn't want her children in that, you know, so she was.

She was mixed emotions because, you know, we grew.

I grew up with Sly Stone and my parents loved their music as well.

But she was afraid for me being out there.

Rightly so.

She should have been.

Because there's no.

Nothing that you can read, no blueprint, nothing to prepare you for that lifestyle.

There isn't.

And that's what she said.

But I was young and I was like, you know, I was singing with my, my mentor, my.

The.

My most favorite group in the whole world.

Are you kidding?

There was nothing that you could say to stop me from doing that.

So, yeah, I went ahead and went out, you know, and I was actually going to community college.

I was going to City College at the time that Sly offered me to go out.

So I just quit.

I just dropped out of school and went out on the road.

It wasn't.

The tour was abrupted.

Right.

It was supposed to be longer and then.

Well, we went out on a lot of tours, quite a few.

And a lot of TV shows.

Way before we got with P. Funk and a couple of years of touring.

We were doing all of the top TV stations, TV shows at that time, like, I can't remember, Tony Lando and Don.

What is it?

Tom Jones Special, Don Kirschner.

You did?

Yeah.

Don Kirchner's Rock Concert.

We were doing just numerous amount of shows, all of the top shows at that time.

And Sly wasn't in the chitlin circuit.

He was basically on the top of the world.

And he was doing most of the shows that black artists weren't doing at that time.

Except for maybe Ray Charles was on that level.

I can't think of anyone else at that time.

And we started.

We went out on a tour with Dr. John, I believe was in another woman.

Frank Zappa.

Wow.

Oh, God.

We went out on a Helen Reddy special.

She had a short little tour there.

Roy Orbison, those kind of shows.

We were basically doing pop, right?

Yeah, we're doing pop shows.

And very, very, you know, on the other side of the spectrum, we weren't doing R B shows at all.

Right.

So we did that maybe at least a couple of years.

And then we were in the studio recording Sly's debut albums.

The first and second two.

The two albums that he did before we actually start got with Parlor Funkadelic.

You know, I had one opportunity to see Sly in concert.

I think it was the early 80s.

And it was Bobby Womack, Jocelyn Brown.

They did a concert in New Haven, Connecticut.

Yeah, Jocelyn and Bobby, we were waiting for Sly, and I just got impatient and I left and I. I'm trying to find out information if he even performed, because it was back during the.

The days if he had performed or not.

Well, you mean the days when they were saying he wasn't showing up.

Yeah, I see.

I didn't.

I didn't know.

I didn't follow up on it, but it was with the.

Bobby there.

Yeah, I heard about that.

I know that Bobby and Sly were really good friends.

And so I. I think that was before I got there.

Okay, Shortly.

Shortly before I got there, he was doing a lot of that stuff with Bobby Womack and actually met Bobby a couple of times, you know, up at Sly's, and met a lot of musicians and artists and stars up there, you know.

You know, I'm still starstruck and I was still, like, you know, tongue tied and just, you know, I couldn't believe where I was for at least a couple years.

Who was maybe one or two stars that you met that you still.

You were so nervous or you can remember to this day that these were.

These were ones.

Well, Buddy Miles was one of them because I know he had.

You know, my.

My dad was a.

Was a rocker.

You know, my dad, like Zappas and the.

And Jimi Hendrix.

And even though we listened to all the Motown and the whole R B to Temptations and the, you know, the Stevie Wonders of that era, dad was still Playing Frank Zappa and songs like Don't Eat the Yellow Snow and I Am the Slime in your video, those kind of songs.

And he loved Jimi Hendrix.

And so.

And I pretty much knew about Jimmy before I got with Sly, so.

But when I saw Buddy Miles sitting in the living room, I was like, you know, and then I also saw, like, God, some of the Tower Power guys used to hang up there.

And Doris Day.

Remember Doris Day?

I mean, she was my favorite actress when I was just a baby.

And in a movie called Calamity Jane, you know, I mean, we're going all the way back, so.

Yeah.

God, I saw Billy Preston was up there, I think Ray Charles, maybe.

Was he at the house?

He wasn't at.

He was at the studio.

I met him when Sly was recording.

There would be other artists and different in Studio A or Studio B.

Like, they would say, zeppelin's over there in that studio, or what was the other guy that was Peter Frampton was in another studio, another side.

And then Sly was.

Became really close friends with Peter Frampton.

They used to play heads to have backgammon tournaments all the time.

And I would.

I would.

I would go with Sly a lot of places.

I would hang out with him.

Right.

I was.

We.

We were kind of joined at the hip there for a couple years.

Everywhere he went, I was right there with him.

So, yeah, it's a lot of memories.

A lot of stars.

I met.

God, of course.

Michael Jackson.

Yeah.

You introduced Mike.

Michael Jackson to Sly, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, there's.

The list is long and I. I talked about it in, in depth in my book.

Right.

And I just happen to have a copy here.

That's why you go to Gold's Gym, to pick up books like that, right?

Well, this is the COVID of it right here.

So, you know, it comes in a.

It's so.

It weighs.

It's so heavy, right?

This thing weighs like 7 pounds, 6 ounces or something like that.

And then it has this little protector, a little sheet protector over it too, so you won't scratch it, Right?

Yeah.

Wow.

And so pull it out the box.

So when I.

When I ship them off, because I mail these off myself, I have a staff of two.

And then they all.

They all come with a poster, right?

Oh, yeah, that's cool.

Poster.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you're gonna get one of these.

Yeah, yeah.

So you get a poster.

Yep.

To crowd of this.

Cool.

That is nice.

You see that bracelet on there?

Yeah, yeah.

The world flags, right?

The.

Yeah, those are the flags that As a solo artist, all those bracelets represent.

When I dropped my All My Funky.

Friends album, which we played on that.

You.

That.

The one that you helped to blow up.

Y.

Those are all the places that I played as a solo artist because of all my funky friends.

Yeah, that's a great.

So I had an artist create the flags from all of the cities and countries that I played.

Mostly countries, rather.

But, yeah, this is the book.

There she is.

And then on the back, of course, it's the same thing that's on the poster.

And then Sly Stone actually did a really nice quote for me on this book, and he called this book an underground railroad to the font.

Wow.

Now, that wasn't basically related to this book.

I decided to use that quote because that's what Sly said one day when he found out that Lynn Mabry and myself, one of his.

His cousin, one of the other background singers we were sneaking off and doing sessions with with George Clinton.

So he said, yeah, y' all don't think I know about you going over there and hanging out on the Underground, y'?

All.

On the Underground.

Read with you.

The Fox.

That was one of.

That was one of his quotes.

And I just was.

I was just proud to put it on the book.

I was.

When's the last time you spoke or saw our Sly?

October.

Okay.

Well, I talked to him when he sent messages from.

From his daughter.

Fun.

Right?

Fun would send me messages from Sly.

Like, the last message I got was from him was for Christmas.

He wished me Merry Christmas.

Okay.

There was something he needed to say to me.

So myself and another one of Sly's proteges that he taught her how to play guitar was Gail Modro.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

And Gail Modro was actually out with the Grand Central Station there for a while.

And.

And Gail Mojo was another singer that sang on a lot of the songs that we did on Sly's debut albums.

Right.

And that's the last time I was in his house.

Yeah.

My buddy Swank Stewart sings with the Family Stone.

The band, you know, Swing.

Yeah, the current family.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's a good friend.

Yeah.

Nice.

So I'm sure they'll carry as long as they can the music down.

Down the road.

Yeah, I think it's going to outlive us all.

Yeah.

Just like the P. Funk legacy.

But, you know, what's really key you have put together and you got great news.

I don't know if you wanted to share about the book.

I mean, people are just loving the book and, you know, some.

Some higher up kind of things that got to be gratifying.

Did you want to talk some.

Some things that happened lately?

Well, yeah, that book has surpass my wildest imaginations.

I started writing that book when I was like, in the third grade and my mother was all things history.

My mother and my father both, they used to share.

Let me start from the beginning.

We didn't have.

We didn't have a TV set when we were growing up.

We couldn't afford one.

So pretty much all we had was my mother's bedtime stories.

And she would share, pass down the.

Our culture, our lineage from her.

Her grandfather, who was.

Was a, you know, 100% indigenous.

Her grandfather was a.

Was called Red Stick.

Okay.

They escaped by living in the.

In the hills in the Rocky Mountains, along the North Carolina, Tennessee border.

They lived in capes.

And so one day, her grandfather, Red Stick came home to the cave.

He was 12 years old, only to discover that his entire family had been brutally murdered.

Now, those are bedtime stories.

My mother used to tell these, and there were so many of them.

And I just kind of started, you know, writing them down and just remembering them.

And I was so mesmerized by my mother's and my father's childhood memories and that I start writing them down.

In fact, my great grandfather, my great great grandfather, that's how I start the first page of my book.

I talk about how the indigenous survived this, you know, through the whole Trail of Tears and the whole nine yards.

That's what I talk about on the first, first page of my book.

So that's one of the reasons why I believe that all of these universities, colleges and libraries and scholars and journalists and fans alike, they.

They fall in love with the book because it's similar to their lifestyle of them growing up.

Especially if you're a black growing up in America, right?

By the time you're four years old, you're an expert on racism.

So it just becomes part of your life.

You don't really understand it.

You just have to deal with it, you know, So I just started writing it all down.

And then when I went to some of the publishing companies, they didn't want me.

Me to talk about the racism.

They didn't want me to talk.

Oh, really?

They.

They told you?

No, they, they didn't Think it was necessary because this book is called the Funk.

Yeah, yeah.

So they didn't understand the correlation between indigenous.

Be wiping off the indigenous Native Americans off the face of this earth.

Right.

You know, in relations to the Funk Queen.

But I was saying it's all connected.

That's where I come from.

And I also talked about my.

My.

My great grandfather on my father's side, my paternal grandfather, great grandfather who came from.

That's my father's side.

Right.

So I talk about in Louisiana.

I go back to the Acadian French in the 15th century in that book where you talk about the Acadian French refused to bend the knee to the Queen.

So just like, what's happening in now, she sent them out of there.

She.

She.

She had them, you know, imported, sent them out.

You know, 10,000 Acadians were deported from London because they refused to bend the knee to the queen.

And they went to Nova Scotia and Quebec.

That's where my wife's from, Quebec.

Okay.

Went to New Orleans, Louisiana.

And that's my fault on my father's side.

I wrote about all of that in my book in the first 10 chapters.

So these.

These publishing companies didn't think it was relevant.

And I do.

I go into much detail.

I'm going to.

Into a great detail in terms of the history.

And I did the research on it based on the stories that my parents shared with me.

And then I felt bad because I wish that both my parents are gone now.

So as I was doing the research, this was during COVID because I didn't have anything to do for those three, four years.

And I started putting that book together, and I started doing the research on the stories that my parents share with me.

And I wish they were here because I had so many questions for them.

Yeah.

But anyway, fast forward up to.

I even wrote about when I said that Sly Stone literally saved my life.

I was a Black Panther, right.

And I was actually involved with Huey Newton, the real Black Panther.

Okay.

And how Sly had to save my life from them.

It got caught.

It turned into a situation that was dangerous for me.

And if it wasn't for Sly, I don't.

I don't know if I would have made it.

And then what's so amazing about it, because I have Sly's book, too.

Sly talked about it in his book as well, Sly said a whole lot of things in his book that I said in my own book, so it let me know that the bond that we had because that Sly book dropped, what, last year?

Yeah, I think last year or year before.

It just let me know that in his spirit that.

The spirit that we had between each other, that bond we had, each other, never, never left.

Because I shared a great deal about my love and my.

And my respect and how Sly changed my life.

And in retrospect, I believe I did the same for him as well.

So that's really special.

So any.

When you're putting the book together, any hesitation or did you get any pushback since it's been publish from anybody in your.

Your circle of friends and associates?

Of course, you know, when.

When you have a truckload of love coming at you, hate's gonna be right behind it, you know, or, or, you know, just a lot of envy and.

But there was a lot more love than there was hate there.

But there was some opposition where people, you know, didn't.

Didn't remember the way that I remember things.

And maybe they basically claim that it didn't happen that way.

You know, it's not that I have such a great memory.

I. I just have a. I write everything down.

The street signs, the weather, the time of the year, the time of the day, if I was hungry or depressed or whatever I was feeling at the moment.

I wrote it, wrote everything down.

I documented it.

So.

And I.

And I re.

Researched the documentation that I even wrote.

If I was in Memphis, Tennessee, doing a concert and there was a mosquito epidemic during that time in the 80s, I wrote that down.

The date, the time, the place, and where I was.

When we had to be in these netted tents during an outside concert because the mosquitoes were so bad.

I mean, they had an epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee.

I wrote about that in my book as well.

And, and.

But some people, yeah, some people basically have different recollections or different memories, and they're saying it didn't happen or it did happen or didn't happen that way.

But, you know, people are like.

Like fingerprints and footprints.

Everyone is different.

They're going to see it a different way.

They're going to see it as a different color, a different time, or definitely going to have their opinions or different.

They're going to be different from.

From.

From yours or mine.

And, and they have the option to do the same.

They can write their own story if they want.

They can write their own book.

And I always believe that if you give someone Else the pen to write your story.

They're going to write it the way that.

That they have been.

Have been taught to learn it, or someone may have told them or someone.

Or they may have actually experienced it for themselves, but they're not going to write it the same way you would write it.

And I'm writing it from firsthand.

And anybody who writes it from secondhand, that's exactly what it is.

Secondhand.

Yeah.

So it's the book.

Incredible pictures and tell us putting all those.

I think that's a big draw, as well as your words to the pictures in the book.

Probably why it's such a big tone.

Where did you get a lot of the photos?

That's a whole nother story on its own.

There was a fan and an ex Baltimore police officer that was a photographer.

I got him in the book here.

Stephen LaBelle was his name.

Right.

Steve LaBelle and Stephen LaBelle followed the Parliament, the Funkadelic tour at the time when the brides of Funkestein were performing and partlet and Fred Wesley and Maceo and the whole.

I think I call them second gen, second and third generation Parliament Funkadelic at that time.

That's a picture of him at the back of my book.

Oh, okay.

Oh, he was a die hard.

He was a die hard.

And he sent me this picture as well.

Right.

He went out for what, three or four years just, you know, traveling on the bus and taking pictures and pictures and pictures.

He had about, you know, thousands of them.

And then he started getting sick and he.

2018.

2019.

Around that time, he said, called me up and said, are you still writing your book?

And I said, yeah.

So he said, I have all these pictures that I've taken over the years.

And he'd been sitting on them for years and didn't do anything with them.

He would sprinkle a couple of them.

A lot of the pictures that are out there on the Social network.

So those were his pictures, but they're uncredited.

No one ever gave him the credit because they didn't know they were his.

So he asked me if he gave me the pictures, would I promise him that I would put them in my book?

And so I did.

Wow.

And he asked, unfortunately, sad to say, that he passed away.

And I.

And that that last page of my book is actually him because I dedicated that.

That those pictures to him because those pictures tell the same story that I was telling.

And without those pictures, I don't Believe them.

The book would be magical.

But he's made it even more.

More.

It's a memorial to these groups because of those pictures.

And the pictures help to create the magic of the story.

Such a visual music movement.

P. Funk and Sly.

I mean, that's a good portion of the package.

Yeah.

And I think the greatest treasure is that you have people who have bachelor's and master's degrees who have done reviews.

And I sold well over coming up to 2,000 books now.

And out of.

Out of 2,000 books, I have over a thousand selfies and photos that the people have sent to me with that book.

I saw a doctor was in his coat, his lap, his lab coat.

Right.

That was cool.

A cardiologist who was a Sly Stone P Foam fan.

Right.

He actually bought the book and sent the picture to me.

And he wasn't the first doctor.

Several.

But then you got Cornel west, who's running.

Who was running for president at the time.

You know, he took a picture and then did a review.

And so I was getting so many of them.

I came up with a funk page, like a funk fan club page on my website, where I have literally maybe five or six hundred pictures with selfies with people holding the book.

And I kind of got behind because I have quite a few that I haven't had a chance to even put on website yet.

I was getting hundreds and hundreds of them, Literally over a little over a thousand.

You're gonna have to hire another person to.

To keep up with all this.

And then the greatest, there was this lady.

She was an educator, still an educator and a journalist, and she used to write for the Scene magazine out of Cleveland, Ohio, and her name was Charlotte Morgan.

Now, Charlotte Morgan used to follow the P. Funk tour, and the newspaper she was writing for used to send her out to do reviews.

You remember back in the days how the newspapers used to send out their journalists to do a review of the concerts, and they had put it in their entertainment section in the newspapers.

This is one story about a lady named Charlotte that followed the tour for a short time and took a lot of pictures of the brides and did a lot of writing up on us because we weren't getting that much exposure around that time as.

As much as we should.

But Charlotte Morgan basically put the brides of Funkelstein on the map in Cleveland, Ohio.

So you fast forward to a couple of years ago.

A little over a year and a half ago, she took that book and took it over to the Rock and Roll hall of Fame archives, the library and they put it into, they put it into the library.

So if you go into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame, you're going to see that.

You're going to see the Funk Queen in there.

So it also came under the attention of a lady named Stacy Brisker who has put that Funk Queen in about.

If there's a library in Ohio, that book is in there, especially in Cleveland.

So it came under the attention of a professor that teaches, I think black history or music at Stanford University.

And perhaps I'll be going there too as a special guest lecturer at Stanford University.

Yeah, well, that's got to happen.

They gotta definitely have you there at least.

Yeah.

So when he put that on his, his Social networks page, I believe it's X he put it on there and he got a few thousand people that came over and saw it.

And so a lady over at Spelman decided to put that book, Spelman University, put that in her, her, in her library.

And then it was, it went on to be into the, to the Wasserman in Sankofa and so many different universities, including the uc, the UC colleges here in, in California.

And then the next thing I know, over 37 HBCUs have requested to put that book in their libraries.

So what might be happening with, with me is that I might be going out on a, A book lecture.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, that would be on.

That would be great.

Under the title the Foam Queen.

I mean, you got to do that.

I mean, with that much support from higher education.

They have those concert series, 30, 37 HBCUs.

Wow.

So, yeah, I'm over the moon on that.

Right.

Well, you know, I trying to coordinate, you know, still the brides of Fuckesteiner still.

I still have the Rise of Fuckstein together.

Yeah, it's been a, it's been a challenge to try to get on a, you know, tours or get any traction going so we can get some consistency with us doing shows because there definitely is a market for the group, but probably gonna put the two together, the lectures and the shows.

Yeah, because they're, they're all connected.

You know, I was talking to, I had them on the show a couple weeks ago.

We're Aaron it this this Friday.

Said some really nice things about you.

Gary Hudgens.

Yeah, Gary Hudge.

Yeah.

He loves you.

He's saying.

He told me.

I mean, it's in the interview, but he said I was pushing myself in a selfish way.

I'd love you and dawn to record something.

He goes, yeah, tell him all the P Funk and Dawn.

I'm a better keyboard player than I used to be when they knew me.

He's a nice guy.

He was phenomenal then.

If he was.

If he's better now.

And he's got to be just phenomenal because he was exceptional back then.

He was way ahead of himself, you know, ahead of his time.

Yeah, he was pretty modern.

He was.

As an artist, you know.

You know what?

Now that I think about it, every last musician and vocalist that was in the P Funk Organization was exceptional.

And you had to be.

To play with the stand with the Funk Soldiers on stage.

You had to be on the same level you did to be on that team.

You really did.

So, yeah, Gary Hudgens is.

I'm looking forward to doing.

Working with him again and Jeff Bunn.

And I'm still working with Blackbird McNight.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Great song.

Yeah.

For the funky folks.

Right?

Show that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And the last show that the Brides of Funkestein did was with.

With Blackbird and Mudbone Cooper.

Muddy came in and sang with us as a guest.

Special guest artist.

Then I used some of Grand Central Station's musicians.

Okay.

And Rusty Allen, you know, bass player that plays Larry would slide.

So, yeah, it was a whole different feel.

You got Terry Scott, who actually played with the Gap Band, and Billy Johnson played with Graham, Larry Graham, and.

Oh, gosh, the list goes on with some of the most talented musicians in the business were.

We put that last show together and it was just scary funky.

Okay.

It was.

Yeah.

So.

So we got to get out there and do more people who are watching listening on whatever outlet you're checking this out.

Spread the word.

For Dawn Silver, the Brides of Funkenstein and Dawn Silva.com.

The Funk Queen, available now.

I. I wanted to ask you about a dear friend of ours.

I really miss him.

Bernie Worrell.

And you were the lead singer with the.

The Woo warriors for.

For a bit, right?

Yeah, yeah.

A couple years.

I got that live recording you guys did.

Which one?

Somewhere.

I. I know I had like a white and a purple.

Purple.

Well, Bernie's color was purple, but it was like.

It was a live show.

I forget which show, but yeah.

Oh, my God, I gotta find.

I gotta find it.

I got so much stuff in the digital archives.

Yeah, that was such a fun.

That was such a fun gig with Bernie Worrell and Woo Warriors.

Yeah, that.

That was a.

We went up and down the Midwest and we played some of the most eclectic places.

Yeah, he had a.

He had a very unique following.

He sure did.

Yeah.

He actually, I think in late 90s, I might have been 98, 99.

He came to the studio, brought all his keyboards, came up from New Jersey, set it up, two hour interview.

He played a little bit.

Chris France and Tina Weymouth came to the studio, surprised him, and man, it was great.

Wow.

Sweetheart of a guy.

Yeah.

Well, you just.

You think about the musicians and I don't want to leave out Michael Hampton.

He said it and did some stuff.

He did some stuff with us, too.

And I think we were doing that Mothership.

What was it?

The Mothership Connection reunion.

Sort of a tour that happened a few years back with.

Right before COVID I believe it was.

We had Grady Thomas from original Parliament and we had Kevin Goins again, too, singing lead with us and Michael Hampton.

And of course Jeanette Washington Perkins from Parlette.

And me and her go all the way back to.

Gosh, we've been friends.

My best friend had a rough start.

But now you're the best friends.

Well, we had a real rough start.

So, I mean, I did talk about it in the book that it's more rougher than most could imagine for females.

But, you know, you had those, what do I want?

How do I want to sit this?

I guess professional jealousies.

And then you had a.

The organization had a tendency to play musicians and singers against each other, you know, And I believe by the time that the Sly's Girls, because that's what they called us when we were going into the P Funk Organization.

They didn't quite accept us fully.

We were basically outsiders, but we were Sly's Girls.

So they gave us that respect because we were coming from Sly's camp.

But we were still not on the team with these guys.

They hadn't quite made up their mind if that.

If they're gonna bring us, let us ride on the Mothership.

So a couple of the girls weren't too happy about it.

And I won't add a Parlette.

I won't say that it was Malia Franklin, because Malia was.

And I were actually really, really close friends.

We stayed, you know, friends.

We were friends before I even met Parliament.

Any members of Parliament, Funkadelic and way after.

So, yeah, me and her were really cool from the beginning.

And I wrote about that in the book.

We could be on here.

Yeah, I know, two or three hours talking about nations that I went.

Yeah.

I wanted to ask you quickly, was there ever a discussion.

Do you have a discussion to work with Prince, that he crossed paths like that?

Yeah, briefly.

But then, you know, we were.

We were in George's camp.

We were with P. Funk.

So that was kind of like a.

Almost a violation for anybody to come and start snatching.

Snatching girls or snatching musicians.

Because you better believe there was always someone wanting to snatch pieces of these.

These thoroughbreds out of that organization.

And we got quite a few offers to go to leave the girls, the musicians, all the time.

But then, you know, because it was such a family unit, everybody was strong.

Nobody was going anywhere.

Not at that time.

Because, you know, Parliament Funkadelic at one time was the greatest funk R B, black group in the world.

So you weren't.

You're not going to give up that.

That position to go work with anybody else.

But it wasn't.

Not saying that people tried to.

To break it up and split us apart.

They did.

It was a lot of that going on then.

Oh, I got it.

I got to give it up to Juni Morrison because he.

He gave it up for a lady, A P Fun, but he gave it up for you.

During the induction speech of the hall of Fame, he said to the ladies.

He mentioned your name in Lynn.

Yeah, he sure did.

Most definitely did that.

Junia surprised me.

He started changing some of the things I wrote in the book about him, too, about where he came from.

So another thing we wanted to talk about, the Great American Music hall in San Francisco.

You're involved with some tremendous musician and friends of yours.

So fill us in on that great project.

Yeah, there was a guy, he was in London, and I believe he books a lot of groups over there at the Great American Music Hall.

And, you know, it's a nostalgic venue.

So he wanted to know if the Brides of Funkenstein were still performing.

And I said, absolutely.

Actually, that was the last show that we did on that level.

And I decided to use some of the local musicians, which happened to be bad members that work with Sly Stone, of course, which was Rusty Allen from sly and Jimmy McKinney, keyboard player who's still out with Sly and the Family Stone.

Now the tribute band with Jerry Martini and Gregorico Sly's daughter, Fun is also in that.

In that group.

And then Billy Johnson was with.

Was the drums.

And he played with Frankie Beverly and Maze, as well as Dave Counsel on keyboards.

He also played with Frankie Beverly and Grand Central Station.

And I can't forget Gail Modro, who.

Came from playing the guitar, right?

Yeah, playing guitar.

And she and Freddie Stone and Slide taught her how to play.

So she has the most unorthodox and the funkiest style rhythm guitarist I've ever heard in my life.

Exceptional vocalist.

And so Gail has been with me for the last 20 years.

And then we had Mudbone Cooper, special guest.

And again with Jeanette Washington Perkins from Parlet.

Now she's an official member of the Brides of Funkenstein.

And then a lady named Valerie Pinkston.

And Valerie's out there with Diana Ross.

She tours with her all year round.

She just happened to be free at that time.

Then I had.

I had a couple of other singers that been with me for years, and that's Jackie Simley and my cousin Donna Taylor.

And Donna Taylor was singing with Burt Bacharach.

And then Jackie Simley was with Shaka.

And there's a little bit everybody, I mean, in the business and all, we put these powerful musicians and singers together.

And that happened to be probably one of the best shows I think I've done, we've ever done and I've done personally and as a group in years.

Many, many years.

What was surprising, though, Joe was in San Francisco.

I thought it was going to be more of a mixture in terms of the fans, but it was like, 98% white.

Oh, really?

Yeah, it was San Francisco.

San Francisco.

So what we did is.

I didn't realize that because when we played the Great American Music hall, we have picked up on the Grateful Dead market, Jerry Garcia's Grateful Dead market.

And the demographics have changed completely.

And these people were so mesmerized.

And I think they were dancing so hard.

I saw one guy completely pass out cold.

Passed out right in front of the stage.

And they were.

They just looked at him and kept on dancing.

It's like.

It was quite an experience.

I mean, to tell you.

So anyone who basically said that the funk market is dead.

Yeah.

That is absolutely not accurate.

Are you talking about, like, the.

The Dead following?

Once years ago, we went to the Gathering of Vibes Festival in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

And Original P, Fuzzy and Grady, they had the Original P Band.

And.

Yeah, yeah.

So.

But it was in the crowd, some guys walking with, like, look like.

I thought it was like a sandwich selling it in the crowd in a tin foil.

I go to my wife, that's stranger.

Selling sandwiches in the crowd.

She goes, yeah, I don't think they're selling sandwiches.

They were just up front, like, selling weed to whoever wanted it.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Well, you, you know, I wrote about it in the book that Lynn and I, we used to actually smoke weed with the front row.

Right.

It was pretty much everybody tried to.

Yeah.

During the show, I remember people, it was word was out that, you know, the girls smoke weed with the audience.

And so the front row, I remember there used to be a lot of guys all kind of bunched up in together, and they were passing joints, and Lynn and I would sit on the edge of the stage with our microphone, singing and smoking weed with the audience.